One of the many competitions held during the Madras week was a multimedia presentation contest for schools on Chennai’s Heritage.
On August 19, student-teams from twenty schools in the city gathered at the Srinivasa Sastri Hall in Mylapore to present their projects on the city’s lesser known landmarks.
Earlier, participants were to select an important landmark of Chennai and register for the competitions, do research on it and create a 10 minute PowerPoint presentation. On the day of the competition, the team from the schools, consisting of 3 students each presented the slideshow. They also answered questions from the judges, on the spot.
The places that the teams chose ranged from the ones like the Music Academy to little known ones like the Ramakrishna Mission Boy’s Home. Many teams chose educational institutions like the Teacher’s College and the Hindu School in Triplicane and quite a few chose temples with interesting backgrounds.
The teams were posed questions on their presentations… why had they chosen the place? How did they carry on their research? What were their sources of information? Every team admitted they had learned a lot when they researched on the place they chose. Viewing the presentations of the teams was an enriching experience, especially the presentations with videos, well-taken photos and places with interesting stories behind them.
The judges, quite impressed with the presentations they saw, said the decision was very hard to make since there were so many remarkable presentations.
Sri Sankara Vidyashramam, Tiruvanmiyur bagged the first prize for their presentation on the Guindy National Park.The second prize went to the team from Sishya, who chose the Connemara Library and included excellent photos of the place in their presentation. Lady Andal Venkata Subbarao School received the third prize for their presentation on 
Royapuram Station- the oldest railway station surviving in its original form in India. The judges also made a special mention of a few other teams for their hard work.
It was an enlightening experience for everyone present on the occasion. For the students winning was just another occasion to be happy. All the participants carried home a lot of information on the city’s heritage and a beautiful pencil sketch of Chennai’s landmarks.
Pic courtesy: www.themadrasday.in