State rural IT quiz set to take urban, national hue

Speaking to Deccan Herald, State IT, BT & ST Principal Secretary Ashok Kumar Manoli said flush with the success of achieving our primary goal of enhancing IT awareness amongst rural students —— in the process bridging the span between urban and rural students —— we now feeel it is necessary to conduct a similar quiz for urban schools in Karnataka. Besides, as part of this, he added, we want to make it a national level competition thereby giving it a true national feel.

He said, that the first step has already been taken wherein this year’s rural IT quiz winners competed with national winners of TCS IT Wiz quiz for schools. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rural IT Quiz, State winners contested in the Special Invitation IT Quiz where winners from TCS IT Wiz from Bangalore, Kolkata, Delhi, Bhubaneswar and Kochi participated.

Parallel streams

Incidentally, while TCS has been conducting the State rural IT quiz in partnership with Karnataka government, concurrently, the IT services & solutions major has also been conducting TCS IT Wiz quiz for urban schools, since 1999.

Explaing the proposed concept, Manoli said, the State proposes to replicate the rural IT quiz for the urban schools in the State from 2010. According to him, the rural and urban competition, can be run in parallel streams, and three teams each from rural and urban schools chosen to compete with students from other parts of the country. From among them, the champion of champions —— the National Champions could emerge —— bringing both rural and urban students on a single competitive platform.

Manoli said the State government officials would be discussing the modalities, and other logistics and infrastructural requirements including costs for the big ticket project with TCS officials in mid-December 2009, or early January 2010, before finally freezing the blueprint.  

Currently, the Karnataka State Rural IT Quiz  is held statewide for students from class 8 to 12 (including PU students). However, students of schools/PU Colleges in City corporation limits of Bangalore, Mysore, Mangalore, Bellary, Davangere, Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum & Gulbarga cities are not eligible to participate.