A competition in which more than 10,000 students from over 1000 schools across India participated and competed with each other digitally

The National Digital Elocution Competition (NDEC) is a one-of-its-kind elocution competition that provides a national level digital platform for school-going students in classes V to X from across India to participate, compete and win prizes—for themselves and their schools—by showcasing and promoting their elocution talent by using the various forms of video communications available at Reliance World.

2008 was NDEC’s third consecutive year and this year the competition took a major step forward over NDEC 2007 in the manner in which it was conducted. NDEC 2008 was held fully online integrating cutting-edge technology and interactivity. A new web-based application—VDO Contest—and Video Conferencing were used to extend the reach of the competition and enable participants to showcase & promote their talent across boundaries. Internet Voting, another first in the competition, gave participants the chance to promote their videos online and gather votes from Internet users worldwide.

Registration to the competition, which began in mid-January 2008, was online: interested students could register for the competition from their house, school or any Internet-enabled computer. This increased participation levels and more than 10000 students from over 1000 schools nationwide registered for the competition.

In the next step, participants had to record their elocution video on the given topics. A web-based application called VDO Contest enabled the recording of videos from any computer with a webcam, microphone and an Internet connection—even a dial-up. By the end of February 2008, more than 5000 videos were recorded and hosted on the NDEC 2008 website that was also created using the VDO Contest application. The VDO Contest application also made possible online advertising and sponsorship opportunities that was leveraged by Chandama, a children’s magazine.

A Censorship committee screened all videos before making them accessible for public viewing. Once published, participants were able to view theirs as well as videos of other participants making it a level playing field and bringing complete transparency to the competition.

The NDEC 2008 website was then opened for Internet voting and participants actively promoted their videos trying to amass as many video views and votes as they could. The website’s dynamic homepage displayed a live tally of the last 10 videos published, top 10 videos viewed and top 10 videos with the highest number of Internet votes. This further heightened the excitement as everyone wanted their video to feature in the top 10. By the end of the Internet voting period, the NDEC website was flooded with 18,00,000 plus video views and more than 7,00,000 Internet votes.

A panel of judges assessed the videos and the semifinalists were selected based on scores awarded by the judges and the Internet Voting results. New topics were given to the selected participants for the semifinals & finals that were held via Video Conferencing. The students presented their elocution via Video Conferencing from a Reliance World in their city and were evaluated by the NDEC panel of judges based in Mumbai.

It was an extremely stiff competition and in the end, what distinguished the winners was the superlative content of their elocution, the amazing confidence levels and most of all the passion to win. Winners took home prizes ranging from medals and shields to scholarships for themselves and for students in need in their school.

Below are the names of winners of the National Digital Elocution Competition 2008.

National Winners & Prizes

The 21 semifinalists were awarded scholarships worth Rs. 2500 each and a Certificate. All other participants received Participation Certificates and Rs. 100 worth Broadband Centre time.

Talent Scouting in the Digital Age—a Case Study on the National Digital Elocution Competition 2008
Download pdf