TCS IT Wiz Quiz Winners
Inspector General of Police Seema Agarwal (left) presents the winners trophy to Colin Paul Joy (second right) and Harshita Mehta (right) of St. Judes Public School and Junior College, Kotagiri, at the regional finals of TCS IT Wiz quiz organised by Tata Consultancy Services in Coimbatore on Friday. S. Narasimhan (second left),Vice-President ,TCS, and the Quizmaster Giri Balasubramaniam (third left) are in the picture. Colin Paul Joy and Harshita Mehta from St. Judes Public School, Kotagiri, cast a spell on the hundreds of people who had gathered to watch the TCS IT Wiz inter-school quiz competition held here on Friday. Cruising through the finals, they created a record of sorts by scoring 110 points, which no other team in India had scored in the TCS IT quiz competition. “The questions were very easy. We have been quizzing since Class X and were given rigorous training from the school,” Colin said. The team was thorough with logos of IT companies, software products, taglines of companies and personalities. Students of Computer Science, Harshita wanted to become an environmentalist and Colin, a software professional.
From 450 students, six teams made it to the finals. The Laidlaw Memorial School and Junior College, Udhagamandalam, G.D. Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Coimbatore, SBOA Matriculation and Higher Secondary School, Coimbatore, Perks Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Coimbatore, Satchidananda Jothi Nikethan, Mettupalayam and St. Jude Public School, Kotagiri were the finalists. The schools from the Nilgiris gave a tough competition to those from Coimbatore, coming up with the answers even before the quiz master could complete the questions. Based entirely on Information Technology, the quiz tested the students’ knowledge of computers and IT companies, their presence of mind and their ability to think laterally. Morphing (the penultimate round) had a set of pictures that to a layman may appear completely disjointed, which the teams had to make sense of. This part of the quiz required the students to be good in lateral thinking.
Open to students from Classes VIII to XII, the quiz was designed to enhance IT awareness among the students and keep them updated on the latest developments taking place in the IT sector. The competition was attended by over 900 students from 70 schools from Coimbatore, Tirupur, Pollachi, Kangeyam, Sathyamangalam, Erode, Udumalpet, Mettupalayam, Udhagamandalam, Kotagiri and Coonoor. The winners received a laptop each and a trophy in addition to other gifts. The second runners up, Laidlaw, Udhagamandalam, received a portable DVD player each and a digital camera.
The six teams that made it to the regional finals received a backpack each, MP3 players, headphones, coffee table books, and T-shirts from TCS besides gift vouchers from hotels in the city. The quiz was conducted by Giri Balasubramaniam. Seema Agarwal, Inspector General of Police (Aavin-Vigilance) and S. Narasimhan, VP and Global Head of Learning and Development, TCS, took part.
