In a recent blog post on the Inside BlackBerry® for Business Blog, we highlighted the BlackBerry® Academic Program and a Pace University project that spanned the globe to assist first graders in developmental education. Today, I’d like to share another incredible example of how mobile solutions and dedicated learning contribute to education. Luciano Freire, Coordinator of Undergraduate Programs in Computer Science and Computer Networks at Universidade Anhembi Morumbi (UAM) in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is currently utilizing mobile solutions as educational tools. As Coordinator of Undergraduate Programs in Computer Science and Computer Networks, Professor Freire is using BlackBerry Academic Program resources to help his students gain a competitive edge in the job market.

UAM wanted to ensure that their students gained a well-rounded set of skills to help them take advantage of the growing mobile market in Brazil. “Mobile development and mobile management are new topics in Brazil,” explains Professor Freire, “so there are few resources about these topics. The BlackBerry Academic Program provides curriculum resources that explicitly reference these mobile topics. Students and professors have access to extensive, high quality resources to study and prepare for classes.”

Students are also given the opportunity to build and test their applications on BlackBerry® smartphones provided by Research In Motion® (RIM®). “This is important,” he says, “because I believe that BlackBerry smartphones are becoming increasingly popular in Brazilian companies. The BlackBerry smartphones provide an opportunity for students to gain exposure to industry technology before beginning their careers.”

UAM’s Ubiquitous Computing course gets students involved in mobile application development. “Students learn to develop and deploy applications for the BlackBerry platform through a balance of theoretical concepts and practical application of the course topics,” Professor Freire explains. Final student projects see students developing applications to solve everyday issues. Students identify problem scenarios that they encounter in their day-to-day lives and create an application that would provide a solution to that problem. Some project examples include an appointment book and a personal finance manager.

The success of teaching mobile solutions has led to UAM’s plans to include BlackBerry Academic Program resources in their Information Systems courses. For the 2012 academic year, UAM is planning on using BlackBerry smartphones in research projects related to augmented reality and mobile development, as part of their Masters of Digital Design degree program.

For more information about the BlackBerry Academic Program, visit www.blackberry.com/academic. You can also view the full UAM story here.

The BlackBerry Academic Program, sponsored by Research In Motion® (RIM®), provides free teaching resources – including free BlackBerry® hardware – to a variety of academic institutions around the world in order to help them deliver effective mobile education. One of these academic institutions is Pace University (Pace) in New York City, where Associate Professor Dr. Christelle Scharff is encouraging students to develop mobile apps that address real-world challenges.

Pace recognized the importance of mobile solutions early on, offering its “Mobile Development and Entrepreneurship” course beginning in 2008. Its mobile courses are built on the principle that what’s significant about mobile development is its potential to create useful tools that improve people’s lives both locally and globally. “In the different courses and projects offered at Pace,” says Dr. Scharff, “students worked on real world projects that impact the community.”

Pace encourages students to look at the potential impact of mobile applications beyond their local campus community. Over the past few years, students from Pace have worked on capstone projects with other students in India and Senegal. “Capstone Projects” are assignments where students work, often in small groups, to solve a real-world engineering problem. One of the applications developed through these capstone projects was TargetFirstGrade. TargetFirstGrade is a BlackBerry application designed to assist first grade pupils in practicing essential skills in math, reading, writing, and geography. It is also available in French by the name CibleCI. The application is designed for students in emerging countries, where classroom sizes are traditionally larger (around 60-80 pupils per class) and teachers are unable to provide consistent attention to individual pupils.

A pilot project is planned for TargetFirstGrade/CibleCI in elementary schools throughout Senegal for the 2012 academic year using 20 BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphones provided by RIM. “What is interesting is that the application has been developed as a collaborative effort of students from different countries, and this collaborative effort has the potential to change the way that pupils learn and teachers teach,” says Dr. Scharff.

For more information about the BlackBerry Academic Program, visit www.blackberry.com/academic – and check out the PDF for the case study as well.