Rahul Gupta
NEW DELHI: In its bid to encourage excellence in computer literacy and
Information Technology in schools at National and State level, the Ministry of
Information Technology (MIT) has instituted the first 'Computer Literacy
Excellence Awards' for schools in the country.
The annual award would be given in recognition of excellent performance and
implementation of computer literacy in schools in the country. The award is open
to all state and central-recognized schools (both government and private) in the
country.
The qualifying criteria of consideration for the award are the performance of
a school in imparting computer education during the last three years,
availability of IT infrastructure in the school, trained faculty and
participation in IT related events at the district and National level.
All the interested schools have to send their nomination proforma to their
respective state governments and Union Territory (UT) administration. The
respective State and UT Governments would now scrutinize the applications and
forward the names of the best school to MIT by November 30.
At MIT, a selection committee would select three best schools for the
excellence awards at the national level from these state and UT level award
winners. W R Deshpande, senior director, Manpower Development and Training
division, MIT said, "We are in the process of receiving the names of state
level winners as November 30 is the deadline. But if the state governments fails
to do so, we will extend our deadline."
MIT has also not yet finalized the date of presentation of awards. Deshpande
said that the date of awards will be finalized only after receiving the names of
winners from all the states and Union Territories.
The winners at the state and Union Territory level will get an award of Rs 1
lakh, while at the National level three awards, which include first prize of Rs
10 lakh, second prize of Rs 7.5 lakh and third prize of Rs 5 lakh would be
given. The winners would utilize the prize in upgrading and building IT
infrastructure in their schools.