The State government should provide incentives to those who carry out projects in Tamil computing, Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIT-Kanpur and local organising committee of the Tamil Internet Conference (TIC) 2010 M. Anandakrishnan said on Saturday.
About one lakh projects were taken up in colleges in the State every year. However, only a handful of them pertained to Tamil computing, he told a function to mark the distribution of prizes to students who won contests organised as part of the TIC.
Deputy Chief Minister M.K. Stalin gave away the prizes to the State-level winners and also released a special souvenir that had 130 articles. Emphasising that greater support should be given to promote the use of Tamil computing, he said that the State government should declare a policy that in the computers purchased for government departments, schools and colleges, the opening screen should be in Tamil when booted.
In an effort to sustain the interest of children in Tamil computing, they should be encouraged to use computers for activity-based learning. For instance, students could collect data and information related to the local economy, history and social issues and feed these in Tamil in the computer and also sort the information in Tamil. The secretariat for Tamil computing should be located with that of classical Tamil, he added.
About 8,000 school students and nearly 3,800 college students participated in the competitions. Dr. Anandakrishnan said prizes would be given away to district-level winners soon.
Among those present were Ministers for Higher Education, School Education and Information Technology, K. Ponmudy, Thangam Thennarasu and Poongothai Aladi Aruna, Chief Secretary K.S. Sripathi and Principal Secretaries for Higher Education and IT K. Ganesan and P.W.C. Davidar.
