That’s Debatable 2021-The tech debating competition
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Julie Walters once said, “Debate is so much better than denial”.The FOSS community,Mozilla Campus Club and the Women in FOSS community of IIT hopes to bring life to these sentiments by taking the initiative to; ‘That’s Debatable 2021’, the interschool debating and speech competition. The main objective of this endeavour is to provide a platform for the youth to voice their opinions on the growing issues concerning Technology and the multiple facets of the IT fields.
The initial rounds of the debating competition commenced at the end of this month where 20 reputed school teams with students from the age of 16-19 were engaged in an epic virtual debate on Tech and IT related topics based on cyberbullying, cybersecurity, the digital divide and internet accessibility and mainly on the gender inequality of the IT sector. The finals are scheduled to be held on May 2. The finalists teams and the best speaker will be presented awards and cash prizes at the closing ceremony while the winning team will be awarded the champions trophy.
In addition to the debating competition, the university students were given the opportunity to present their opinion on topics related to the theme on freedom of home internet accessibility by unlimited connectivity. The speeches presented by all participants were shared on social media during the course of the tournament. The top three winners from the speech category, will be presented with cash awards.
“The aim of this event is to encourage youngsters to enter the IT sector with confidence and to allow them to enjoy privileges of it without any obstacles,” said Brian Fernando, the president of the FOSS Community and the Mozilla Campus Club of IIT.
Activism fuelled by wisdom has long standing roots in education. The collaborative efforts of the FOSS and Women in FOSS Communities and the Mozilla Campus Club of IIT together has successfully managed to bring the disparity of equality and the biases which exists within the technological landscape across the world into the limelight. This remains the first steps of awareness raised by the youth of the country in curbing the existing issues in the fields of IT.