The annual BETT educational trade exhibition has moved on a long way from the days when it seemed mostly about picking computers and cheap software for the Acorn BBC B or Archimedes. The current show, which closes today (Saturday), has products that few people would have considered way back then. Examples include digital signage, short-throw projectors (for whiteboards), electronic money, CCTV cameras and biometric entry and registration systems. In some cases, schools could be getting ahead of most businesses.
One example is the VeriCool Fingertip Cashless Catering System. This uses a small pad for fingertip scanning and verification. Pupils use money preloaded into their accounts to pay for lunch with their finger, without having to use cash or a swipe card. Not only does this solve the problem of lost or stolen dinner money, it means no one can tell who is getting free school meals. The same system can also be used for checking people in through the school entrance or registering attendance at lessons.
Another cashless epayment company, sQuid, has also started to offer biometric fingertip identification. sQuid provides for micropayments in schools using a contactless card system like the ones widely used for transportation systems. This is useful, again, because it avoids the problems of handling cash and integrates with school accounting and catering systems. At BETT, sQuid said it had introduced a fingerprint-based system that was being used at Banbury School in Oxfordshire.
Face recognition is another approach. Aurora was demonstrating Face Register (which it calls faceREGISTER), which was launched in April as a "post 16 registration solution" (PDF). Students enter their pin number, then the machine takes their photo using infrared flash and compares it against the data held on file. The company says it takes less than five seconds to sign in, and students can sign out in three seconds or less. Obviously Face Register allows for all kinds of tracking by student, by subject, by tutor and so on. But it also provides an attendance record for those pupils claiming a government Educational Maintenance Allowance, designed to encourage poorer students to stay on after they reach 16.
Nor is this the limit for what's appearing in schools. Some have already installed CCTV systems, and the analysis software is becoming increasingly sophisticated. For example, Security Systems Technology (SST) says its "recent education work includes an IP-addressable solution with over 100 cameras at Brampton Manor School in east London and a staff time & attendance project at The West Bridgford School in Nottingham." Its press release adds:
"Video analytics, including people counting as deployed by SST, has become a valuable tool for University & school facilities managers often to aid the Utilisation Survey process. Alarm-based installations are able to continuously monitor CCTV images throughout a school or college, creating an alert if certain patterns of behaviour occur such as large groups gathering in an area or intrusion into a protected zone. Facility managers at educational sites will immediately recognise the potential applications of such scene analysis."
We already know that the UK has become a "surveillance society" -- the House of Lords Constitution Committee said as much in its report, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, published a year ago.
Kids are already tracked by CCTV cameras in town centres and perhaps on buses and trains. Tracking them in schools seems the obvious next step.
