Cuyahoga Community College, for the fifth year in a row, will recognize, reward and encourage high school students who design and/or develop web sites through its Click! High School Web Competition. According to a press release today:

The Click! competition is open to any high school student or class in the Greater Cleveland area. Students may enter any web sites they’ve designed/built in the last two years, whether or not the sites are currently “live” on the Internet and whether they were created in school or at home. Teachers can enter class projects completed by a group of students.

This is an outstanding opportunity for high school students, and I would personally like to see more of these types of web competitions. I believe there are a fair amount of other types of web competitions that target college students and those already in the workforce, but getting high school students involved is much more important.

In the case of the Click! High School Web Competition, there is a partnership with the Web Association, the professional organization for the Northeast Ohio Internet community, which provides even broader recognition, encouragement and rewards for student web designers. A panel of web professionals will judge entries in a variety of categories, including personal, educational and commercial categories. All participants gain the experience of having their work evaluated by a panel of professional web designers from some of Cleveland, Ohio’s best web and internet companies.

In my home town of Mabank, Texas, the local government entity held a competition for students to create a website about the community, with an emphasis on the local town, as a way to attract more business and visitors to the community. I’m planning on working with the local government to continue this competition, and will offer to host all of the sites and spend some time using my search engine marketing skills to help promote the winning entry.

I also volunteer some of my time to talk to University of Texas at Arlington college students once a semester. Talking to the internet marketing students is both helpful for me (I get an opportunity to see what their interests are right now) as well as helpful for them.

What are you doing with your local government or local area to help grow the web design, web marketing, and search engine marketing industries in your area?