The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : When the IT bug bytes rural areas

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 07, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

When the IT bug bytes rural areas

The annual
Rural IT Quiz will be held for students of
class 8 to 12

Bangalore: Whoever said IT is an urban preserve? The State departments of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science and Technology, in partnership with STPI-Bangalore and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), have launched the annual Rural IT Quiz. The quiz will be for students from class 8 to 12 (including pre-university students) and the finals will be at BangaloreIT.in 2007, which will take place between October 29 and November 1.

Over 9.55 lakh students took part in last year’s quiz. This year, it hopes to cover about 20 lakh students across the State, making it one of the biggest programmess of its kind.

IT awareness

The quiz is designed to expose more students to the IT industry and encourage all rural schools across the State to step up IT awareness among students.

This programme will be organised by the offices of Deputy Director for Public Instructions, Education Department at the district level in co-ordination with the Department of IT, BT and S&T.

The quizmaster is “Pickbrain” Giri Balasubramaniam.

Aim of the event

At a joint press conference, M.N. Vidyashankar, Secretary to Government, Department of IT, BT and S&T, Government of Karnataka and N.G. Subramaniam, president of TCS Financial Solutions, said that the aim of the event is to create awareness of IT across the State, especially in rural areas.

“The Government has been making concerted efforts to elevate awareness of IT at school levels. The participation last year was highly encouraging and this year we are hoping to exceed the numbers significantly,” said Mr. Vidyashankar.

TCS will sponsor the cash awards for the regional level and State level winners as follows: Regional Finals: I Prize – Rs. 15,000, II Prize – Rs. 7,000 and III Prize – Rs. 4,000; State Finals: I Prize – Rs. 70,000, II Prize – Rs. 35,000 and III Prize – Rs. 20,000.

There is no fee for participation. Students of schools and PU Colleges in the City Corporation limits of Bangalore, Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum and Gulbarga cities are not eligible to participate in the quiz.

Four rounds

The quiz will consist of four rounds.

The preliminary round will be held on 10th September at schools and colleges.

The district level quiz will be conducted on September 24 in each district and the top 50 teams will be selected for the regional level quiz.

The regional level quiz will be conducted in 6 locations: Gulbarga (October 15), Dharwad (October 17), Davangere (October 18), Tumkur (October 19), Hassan (October 22) Udupi (October 24).

The State finals of the quiz will be held in Bangalore on October 30 during the BangaloreIT.in 2007 event.

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