Thaindian News

Ahmedabad, Feb 9 (IANS) Students in the city Wednesday got an opportunity to showcase their general knowledge prowess at IGNITE 2011, a mutli-city, inter-school quiz contest organised by the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU).The contest attracted over 96 teams representing various city schools.

A.R. Sai Anirudh and Shubham Sanjay Panchal of Kendriya Vidyalaya SAC, won the contest while Saagar Takhi and Yash Jain of Zydus School of Excellence were the runners-up in the event held at the Bhaikaka Auditorium.

Some of the questions, posed by the quizmaster Kunal Savarkar, found easy answers, but some made the contestants think hard.

The auditorium was packed to capacity with students cheering their respective school teams.

Addressing the students, the chief guest A.K. Singh, convener of the Knowledge Consortium of Gujarat and former vice chancellor of Ambedkar Open University, said IGNOU is promoting school education where the stress is on enhancing teacher training.

According to Avani Trivedi, in-charge of IGNOU regional centre in Ahmedabad, the idea of such events was to ignite students’ interest in higher education and make them aware of the open and distance learning system.

The winners received a trophy for their school, individual trophies, book vouchers and a gift hamper each.

An exhibition and a presentation were also organised at the venue to make students aware of various IGNOU programmes.

Ahmedabad was the sixth city where IGNITE 2011 was organised. Before this, the quiz contest was held in Delhi, Kolkata, Guwahati, Bangalore and Kochi.

The contest will be held in some more cities before the grand finale of the winning teams in Delhi.

IGNOU is one of the largest open universities in the world by enrolment, with over three million students. Starting with just two courses and 4,000 students in 1985, the university is today one of the most diverse and inclusive institutions globally, offering over 486 programmes.