EDUCATION

Hostel residents hold function
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, March 5 — Hostel residents of Government College, Sector 46, today held their annual function on the premises of the Sector 15 hostel.

The residents presented a colourful cultural programme in the form of various songs and dances.

The chief guest of the day was Mr K.A.P Sinha, Director Public Instructions (DPI) Colleges, UT, gave away prizes to the residents who had excelled in academics, sports, and other co-curricular activities during the session 1999-2000. Ambuj Sharma of BA-III was awarded the Amandeep Memorial Running Trophy for his outstanding contribution as the perfect of the hostel. Sumeet Chhabra was awarded the Best Resident of the Hostel award.

The Principal of the college and the chief warden, Maj D.P.Singh welcomed the guests and the chief guest and made a request to Mr Sinha to give priority to the construction of the hostel building in the college campus as commuting between the two diagonally opposite corners of the city caused a lot of inconvenience to the students. He also said that as a result of this, the number of hostel residents was decreasing every year, which was making it difficult to meet the expenses like paying of the electricity bills.

Later, Prof Sahib Singh, the warden, read out the annual report of the hostel highlighting the various achievements of the hostel residents.

Tibetan dances at hostel function
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, March 5 — The annual function of all three hostels of Government College, Sector 11, was held today at the college premises. The function was presided over by Dr V. K. Bansal, Dean Student Welfare, Panjab University.

A variety programme that included folk songs and dances by Tibetan students and skits by hostelers was held.

Dr Bansal said all those who participated in the variety programme today must participate in the Inter-Zonal Youth Festival being held in Panjab University from March 8.

Dr S. N. Singla, Principal, welcomed the guests.

Local boy is maths olympiad awardee
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, March 5 — Divesh Aggarwal, a plus one student of the local DAV College, has been selected as an Indian National Mathematics Olympiad awardee for 2000 from the North West Zone.

He has been invited to the International Mathematics Olympiad Training Camp to be held from May 5 in Mumbai. The camp will be conducted by the National Board for Higher Mathematics Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India. At the end of the camp, six students will be selected to participate in the 41st International Mathematics Olympiad to be held in Korea in July.

‘Develop computer skills in kids’
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, March 5 — The computer skills of a child need to be developed progressively in three different areas— text book or the internet, software and school projects. This was one of the recommendations made today on the subject of IT in education on the second day of a two-day workshop on 'Introduction of Information and Communication technologies in Schools' being held at Shivalik Public School, Sector 41.

The workshop was sponsored by the Indian National Commission, Ministry of Human Resource Development in co-operation with UNESCO. The session today was presided over by Mr D S Saroya, the Director Public Instructions (DPI) Schools.

The areas of discussion in the workshop focussed on how to use computer as a tool and resource for learning, teaching and administrative work.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Rudolph Stevenson, the Education Director of Jiva Learning System and also a consultant to Ministry of Education, said while focussing on IT education for children it should be kept in mind that computer education would be properly guided though learning, subject integration and skill development.

Another interesting part of the session were subjects like utilisation of school resources after school hours, making connections between school and home and community involvement in learning.

Mr Stevenson maintained that computer education has to be value-based to focus on various aspects of a child's learning process to help in e-mail worldwide, web-sites and virtual reality activities.

The session also discussed the issues the use of information and communication technologies and the development of web-based content for use in IT education for children.

COURTS

Compensation, refund for complainant
Tribune News Service

PANCHKULA, March 5 — The District Consumer Disputes and Redressal Forum ordered Talwar Refrigeration and Air Condition Engineer of the township to refund Rs 2,000 to Mr S.C. Bhatia of Sector 10, pay Rs 2,000 for mental agony and harassment and Rs 800 as costs of proceedings for deficiency of service in February this year.

In his complaint, Mr Bhatia, who runs a karyana store, said he bought a deep freezer to preserve and store some items. In February 1998, he approached the company to repair the compressor. The company took the deep freezer for repair and asked him to pay Rs 2,200, following which the required repair was carried out. He was given a one-year guarantee on the deep freezer.

Mr Bhatia alleged that the freezer worked for 24 hours only, which was brought to the notice of the company, which promised to rectify the defect but failed to turn up even after repeated reminders. Later, the company asked the complainant to send the freezer to its workshop, which he did. However, the complaint was not rectified for about a month, after which he removed the freezer from the workshop to his shop. It has been non-functional since then.

The company, in a written statement, denied the allegations levelled by the complainant. The bench observed that the company had denied carrying out any repair of the deep freezer which belonged to the complainant. It also observed that after promising to rectify the fault before the forum, the company had failed to do so, which amounted to deficiency of service and entitled the complainant to compensation.