MIT institutes Computer Literacy Excellence awards

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.