Dell launches 'Study Buddy' contest for kids

BANGALORE, INDIA: Dell in collaboration with Microsoft has rolled out a unique contest called ‘Study Buddy Program’ (“Study Buddy”) for students, where the students strive to explore innovative ways of how they can make India a better place with the use of technology.

Commenting on the initiative Mr. P. Krishnakumar, executive director, marketing — consumer and SMB, Dell India said ''Once children learn how to dream and work towards it, there is nothing stopping them. The main objective of Study Buddy is to have one idea spark another and to use technology as one way of creating the spark. Dell has always worked towards revolutionizing education through technology and through such offers, we want to encourage the students to help believe that in each of us there is a dream which, when fulfilled, can be translated into a benefit for everyone and a greater strength to the nation.''

The contest will cover 8 cities across India, comprising students between class 6 and 10. With a word limit of 50-100 words, students will need to submit an essay that illustrates their dream idea using their study companion, the computer.

The entries generated will then be evaluated at the school level by a qualified panel of judges. Students whose dream to make a difference is the most visionary as well as promising will be selected to participate in the city level qualifiers where they will work on a project based on a selected topic.

Each student will be given 30 days to work on their essay and asked to make a report of the same using any of the tools from the Microsoft Office suite, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. These contestants will then be required to submit their essays at any of the Dell showrooms in their city, where Dell is specially providing the PC infrastructure, free of cost, to enable them to upload the entries for city level evaluation.

Winners of the city level evaluation will be determined by a select jury panel whereby the top 10 winners from each city will receive a scholarship from Dell and Microsoft jointly. In addition, the students whose entries are judged to be the top 10 across all participating cities will also win an Insprion All-in-One.

Study Buddy is geared towards encouraging school children to adopt technology in their own ways and utilize its potential in exploring and widening their scope of thinking and thereby encouraging learning.

The programs aims at inspiring and enabling students to discover new possibilities with technology that is easy, fast and fun.