The websites submitted for the competitions were evaluated by three panels of judges on 3rd October 2009, and the results were finalized. The judges were provided the set of rules that had been given to the contestants, and were handed over the websites with some suggested evaluations guidelines. The results handed over the panels are considered final and will be announced during the final project ceremony to be held at the NUCES Lahore campus in November 2009.

There were a total of nine submissions received for the community website competition. Each website was developed by a group of students from a participating school. The were three judges in the panel for this category, Dr. Qasim Sheikh, CEO National ICT R&D Fund, Mr. Hasan Rizvi, CEO FiveRivers Technologies and Ms. Reba Shahid, Editor Spider Magazine. The panel was impressed by the level of effort put in by the students, especially keeping in mind the fact that the schools were facing large amounts of load shedding during the time the websites were developed. The panel noted the tough competition in their category, and in Ms. Reba Shahid’s words, it was a “great effort”, and Dr. Qasim Sheikh expressed great happiness at having seen all the local language content produced by the school students.

Ms. Reba Shahid, Dr. Qasim Sheikh and Mr. Hasan Rizvi viewing community website submissions

There were a total of ten submissions for the school website competition. The panel for the school websites, developed by teacher groups from each school, was made up of three members, Mr. Ahmed Nawaz, General Manager PITB, Mr. Sajjad Kirmani, Executive Vice President IT/Operations NetSol and Mr. Zia Imran, Vice Chairman PASHA. Mr. Zia Imran noted that the output was impressive considering that the students had received 15 days of training. Like most of the other judges in the panels, Mr. Sajjad Kirmani especially appreciated the participation of female teachers and students. Mr. Zia Imran expressed his excitement at being able to participate in the project as a panel member and Mr. Ahmed Nawaz summed up the entire activity with the words “Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!”

With a total of 38 submissions, a larger panel was needed to evaluate websites submitted by individual students. The panel for websites on miscellaneous topics (relevant to the participant’s local communities) therefore included Dr. Khaver Zia, Dean CS, BNU, Mr. Arif Kundi, Director IT, MoIT, Mr. Touheed Ahmed from the Punjab Public Service Commission, Mr. Zaheer Khalid from Urdu Science Board, Mr. Nauman Chishti from Iqbal Academy, and Mr. Sanwwer Hussain from the Directorate of Staff Development, Government of Punjab. The panel was first divided into three groups, and each group given a set of websites to evaluate. Each website was viewed and graded on a number on points. At the end of this exercise, the three groups got together to select the winner, and ten other best websites. Mr. Touheed Ahmed remarked how some of the contestants had almost taken on the role of journalists, in context of the level of research effort put into some of the websites.