OK, I was wrong about all publicity being good publicity. Incom, the company supplying the free technology for the RFID trial has pulled out.

I wonder how this will affect other elementary school identity efforts.

Knowing where a child is for attendance, etc…, could also be accomplished with existing contactless smart card or prox technology. Granted, active tags take away concerns about compliance among an elementary school population. I wonder however, if you could accomplish the same tasks at a lower cost with multiple readers at every entrance using traditional technology? Sure your reader infrastructure would cost more, but with an elementary school turnover, active “badges” could cost you a ton of money. I suppose the question becomes where do you want to bear the cost, the capital budget of a physical plant (readers) or the per student cost of the badges.

Besides, is elementary school attendance really the best application out there for RFID? ID cards for school lunches makes a lot of sense. So do cards for parent matching or “roll call” for events or fire drills. Even bus applications to ensure your child actually did get to school make more sense than classroom attendance.

Let us know what you think.

If you’re with InCom we would love to know the street price on your system or the intended commenrcial applications.

There was a fair amount of controversy last week regarding a California school’s test plan for RFID “badges.” I used quotes because if these had been the normal ID badges that most corporate, government and university employees carry with an RFID component I wonder if there would have been anywhere near the uproar?

CR80News nailed it when they said ”

the way the system is being conceptually ‘framed’ is adding to the fire. In an AP article, the system is described as relying “on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock …”

The perception of public schools is bad enough without literally treating the kids like cattle. No wonder it made headlines. In reality, if the badges had been the traditional credit card form factor and the school had framed it in terms the parents and media already accept, “access control” badges, we probably would not have heard a thing. In actuality, knowing where elementary school kids are is a good thing. I want to know if my child made it on and off the bus. I want to know if they are skipping class. If each teacher could provide an extra half hour of teaching each day by not bothering with attendance and paperwork, everyone would be better served. If systems could filter attendance patterns to identify students for early intervention, that would justify the system. Unfortunately, the debate was framed in terms of asset management, rather than students environment by focusing on the technology, not the benefit.

Most people do not realize it, but their movements and their children’s movements are already noted. All it takes is simple data mining to turn that into tracking. People involved with technologies like RFID often forget just how sensitive the public is to these issues. This controversy should highlight both the need to be more sensitive about what is deployed and how those deployments are communicated.

On a slightly different note, it may not help them in the elementary school market, but this may be good publicity for the supplier, . All publicity is good publicity?

;CR80News

We’ve had a hiatus of a few months while I was working on other projects and fine tuning some aspects of the site, mostly to enable trackback, ping and RSS.

Some of these are still in process, so please be patient. Hopefully, this will make this discussion easier to participate in for myself and others. If you have comments or suggestions, please post. At the moment registration is open and autmatic, so have at it.

Thank you for visiting,

Bret Tobey