Eighty-six Grade 10 and 11 pupils from schools in the Western Cape are partici-pating in cellular major BlackBerry’s 2013 Mobile Application Development Challenge, which provides them with free programming training and the opportunity to create and market their own mobile appli-cations, says University of Western Cape (UWC) Department of Information Systems lecturer Dr Johan Breytenbach.

Pupils will attend six training sessions at the UWC’s CoLab and at BlackBerry’s Apps Lab at the Bandwidth Barn, in Cape Town, from June to August.

They will be trained in using the Java pro-gramming language and installing and setting up the necessary tools to develop applications for BlackBerry handsets and playbooks.

“You will receive training free and the app will remain yours to do with as you please afterwards. What we get out of it is an improved app ecosystem. We need more apps developed for South Africans by South Africans,” high-lights Breytenbach.

The applications should be focused on three broad categories –a people category, in which apps should make a difference in the health or functioning of the community; the planet category, where apps should make people more environmentally aware or encourage green thinking and behaviour; and a profit category, where apps should show excellent business sense and generate money.

The challenge, now in its second year, is aimed at introducing high school learners to the world of mobile application development and modern entrepreneurship.

Pupils were selected for participation based on their academic proficiency, especially in mathematics, information technology (IT) and business subjects, as well as on their ability to generate ideas. The IT curriculum advisers of the Western Cape Department of Education ensure that the challenge is aligned with the formal curriculum to ensure the process benefits schools.

Experienced trainers will facilitate the train-ing sessions on Friday afternoons. The sessions will focus on the further development of the participants’ core technical Java proficiency and their design and entrepreneurial skills. After that, learners will have four to six weeks to complete their mobile applications.