School puts a RFID chip on pupils
Electronic tag test for students
Chris Walker - Doncaster Free Press
21-10-07
Currently ten pupils at Hungerhill School in Edenthorpe are having their movements monitored by radio technology, but its Doncaster makers hope the system could soon be attached to every school uniform in the country, if the pilot scheme proves successful.
Under the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) surveillance system the Hungerhill pupils have a memory microchip discreetly embedded onto their school badge which produces a radio signal. It means the pupils can be identified the moment that they step into a classroom. Its inventor, Trevor Darnborough, says the technology has many advantages including; offering accurate and speedy registration of pupils, ensuring child security, providing visual confirmation of attendance to help cover teachers and easy data input for the school's behavioural and reporting system.
But the system, which is believed to be the first of its kind in the country, has been slammed by civil liberty campaigners who believe radio surveillance should only be used on criminals and not on schoolchildren.
David Clouter, a parent who founded the "Leave them kids alone" organisation to oppose the fingerprinting of children in school, said: "To put this in a school badge is complete and utter surveillance of the children. Tagging is what we do to criminals we let out of prison early. With pupils being fingerprinted and now this it seems we are treating children in a way that we have traditionally treated criminals. It's the first time I've ever heard of this happening and I think it's appalling. I'm not sure how it will support personalised learning to track a pupil. You need to know the pupils individually and develop a relationship with them to find out what their needs really are rather than simply chipping them."
Mr Darnborough, who runs Darnbro Ltd, said his product is currently the subject of a patent application but after a "successful trial" at Hungerhill is now ready to have a crack at the £300 million school clothing market.
He said: "The Department for Education and Skills is keen to promote use of electronic registration in schools because of its benefits in efficiently monitoring pupils' attendance and the speedy retrieval and analysis of data. The system saves valuable lesson time, often wasted in registration and monitoring, while ensuring parents of their children's security. And there's the additional benefit of reduced costs in replacing school uniforms that have gone astray.
"We believe the system will work equally well in corporate and commercial scenarios and we're now seeking backing to help us attack a huge potential market, including the £300m annual school clothing spend."
Darnbro state that their product can "trace a pupil's every step during the school day" and that the system can be set up to limit access to doors for certain people at certain times, including shutting the main doors of a school to pupils during classtime.
They stated that schools in the Doncaster area have expressed a keen interest in the product as the government wants to introduce a fully computerised registration system with internet access for parents by 2008.
Hungerhill headteacher Graham Wakeling said: "The school is trialling the project and a
variety of tests to measure compatibility with a range of school information management systems are being carried out.
The system is not intrusive to the pupil in the slightest. The benefits are that it provides immediate registration of the pupil as they enter the classroom. This supports staff as they are getting to know pupils.
It also links the pupil directly to the curriculum they are following and specifically to their assessment data. All the information it provides is already stored on the school information management system. The advantage is that it provides immediate access."
He added that the pilot was started in February of this year and all the parents of children involved in the scheme were supportive of it.
Hungerhill chair of governors, Moira Bates, said she was unaware of the project and was not prepared to comment until she had had a meeting at the school.
Walk on the wired side: jacket that
lets parents keep track of children
• GPS technology provides updates every 10
seconds
• Firm says garment gives young more independence
John Crace - The Guardian - October 23 2007
• Firm says garment gives young more independence
John Crace - The Guardian - October 23 2007
The asset's coordinates are longitude -0.098610, latitude 51.519699. At least that's what the read-out on my computer screen says. I've never heard my son, Robbie, described as an asset before, but I guess there's a first time for anything. Two minutes later, I get an update. He's barely moved, since he's walking at an unbelievable 1.1 mph. It's definitely him. No one else can dawdle like that. I switch the screen over to a Google Earth satellite map and follow his return to the building.
Robbie is wearing one of the first GPS tracker jackets, launched this week in the UK by Blade Runner, the clothing manufacturer that specialises in equipment for the police and security services and which recently brought out the first school uniform in slash-proof Kevlar, in partnership with Asset Monitoring Solutions (AMS), a market leader in tracking and security technologies.
And he's impressed. Not so much with my ability to know where he's been, but with the jacket itself. He'd been decidedly sniffy when I'd shown him the promotional picture of a three-year-old wrapped up in a twee puffa jacket.
"I'm not wearing that," he announced. When you're nearly 12, street cred counts for a great deal. But the jacket that turns up is black, urban and edgy, with a sewn-in iPod holder. He nods: "Nice."
But it's the technology that is likely to appeal to the people who are buying it, because at £250 - or an extra £80 if you want it with a Kevlar lining - and a monthly £10 satellite tracking charge, it is not cheap. It is simple, though. It runs off a web-based system, so there's no software to load or minimum PC requirements; you just get your own user login and you're up and running. Or walking very slowly, if you're Robbie.
The small rechargeable device - it has a 15-hour battery - fits neatly into a pouch inside the jacket. You switch it on when you leave the house and what you get is nothing less than the ability to know where someone is - within four square metres - anywhere in the world. You can watch them move, check where they've been and get updates every 10 seconds. You don't even need to be permanently logged on to your computer, as you can have email alerts sent to your Blackberry or text messages to your mobile.
It sounds ideal for a certain type of over-protective, borderline paranoiac parent with too much time on their hands, and Adrian Davis, Blade Runner managing partner, admits that is part of the target market. "There are parents who are very concerned about their child's safety," he says diplomatically, "and this will give them peace of mind."
But he is also keen to point out there are wider applications. "If your kids are doing adventure sports, like snowboarding, you can always know where they are. And if they get into difficulties, they can set off an alarm that tells you their location."
The GPS can be set up in almost any way you like. You can geo-fence it so you only get alerts if your "asset" steps outside a certain boundary, the school for instance, and you can set a curfew so it sets off an alarm after a particular time. Yet despite these Big Brother overtones, Martin Taylor, sales director of AMS, suggests the benefits can cut both ways. "Kids want their independence," he says, "and parents might be more willing to allow them to go out more on their own if they could check up on where they were from time to time and know they would be immediately informed if there was any trouble."
There has also been interest from companies whose workers spend a lot of time in potentially hazardous situations alone. There is one small fly in the proverbial; if you take the jacket off or lose it, the whole thing is pointless. Then again, with the amount of stuff Robbie has lost, I'd probably be less interested in knowing where he was than locating his clothes anyway.
| Playing safe: The tracking technology boom | |
| Personal Companion | Tracker developed by Globalpoint Technologies which relies on technology pioneered by the Ministry of Defence to track and monitor anything to within a few metres. The device, which is about the size of a mobile phone, can fit into a pocket or schoolbag and has high-sensitivity GPS, which allows it to be used indoors. Parents log on to a website using a secure password to monitor their child's whereabouts |
| Personal Locators | US company Wherify offers a multi-coloured device, worn as a wristwatch, which operates in a similar way to the Personal Companion |
| Toddler Tag | A child-safety monitoring system
from Connect Software that can be sewn
into clothing. Smaller than a domino, the device emits radio waves and
works with a reader to monitor a child's movement. It raises an alarm
when a child moves outside a certain range |
| Loc8tor Plus |
Loc8tor plus can be used for a number of children at the same time. It consists of four tags the size of a stamp and a homing device the size of a television remote. If a child wanders outside the preset area, the tag sends an alarm signal to the handset. Flashing arrows direct you to the missing child, up to 600ft (183m) away |
| Chip locators | Professor Kevin Warwick, of Reading University, developed technology that made it possible for children to have a chip inserted under the skin, allowing them to be tracked |
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