Trend Report: Education
RFID Tags Help
Schools Keep Tabs
Schools are embracing RFID
technology for everyday tasks
from taking attendance to
securing high-value electronics.
one day soon, homeroom teachers in your local
middle and high schools may stop scanning rows of desks and
making each student yell out “Here!” during a morning roll call.
Instead, small cards, or tags, carried by each student will transmit
a unique serial number via radio signal to an electronic reader
near the school door. Students won’t have to stop, swipe their
cards, press their fingers against a pad or interrupt their chatter
with friends as they pile into school. The reader will instantly relay
the signals from their tags to a school computer network that
marks them as present.
The technology behind this 21st-century roll call is radio frequency
identification, or RFID. Already commonplace in other sectors
of contemporary society, it helps retailers track merchandise,
lets libraries manage their book collections and enables state
governments to collect highway tolls from motorists who don’t
want to stop and fish for change.
RFID has numerous applications for the K–12 education market
beyond taking attendance automatically. By affixing tags to
such high-value assets as laptop computers and overhead
projectors, schools can keep the devices secure and locate
them quickly when they’re needed. By asking teachers to
carry or wear tags as badges, schools can automatically
clock them in and out of work and quickly find them when
emergencies arise. The tags can be equipped with panic
buttons so that teachers can use them to call for help when
necessary. Schools can also issue tags with temporary
>>
RFID Tags Help Schools Keep Tabs
Besides featuring photo
identification, pocket-size
badges with RFID tags can
be customized to reflect a
school’s personality.
take daily attendance of its 600 students. Schools in Texas
and California have tried the technology, and a large school in
Florida is considering it.
Comstock/Jupiter Images
With assistance from all-in-one vendors, administrators and
parents welcome turnkey RFID technology tailored to students
in grades K–12.
>> passes to keep track of visitors around the campus and send
automatic alerts if anyone should wander into an unauthorized
area or overstay a scheduled departure time. RFID vendors refer
to this last set of capabilities as “choke-point technology.” It relies
on devices called “exciters” that trigger tags as they pass through
a choke point, which in turn transmits a message to a receiver.
This instantly alerts school authorities when a tagged asset or
person passes through a gate, doorway or other tightly defined
area. In addition, by equipping school vehicles with RFID readers,
schools can even monitor when and where each student gets on
or off a school bus.
Some schools are already experimenting with RFID. Enterprise
Charter School in Buffalo, N.Y. began using it three years ago to
Privacy Concerns
Obstacles remain to RFID’s wider migration from the commercial
arena to the educational market. First, some parents object
that electronically tracking their children’s whereabouts might
compromise their privacy. But as AT&T associate director of
K–12 education marketing Kevin Carman points out, using
RFID technology simply helps schools do more efficiently
and effectively what they’re already doing manually—taking
attendance, for example, and monitoring and controlling who
enters and leaves their buildings.
Besides, Carman notes, RFID tags come in two varieties: passive
and active. Passive tags carry very little information about
the person or thing being tracked. Lacking an independent
power source, they’re unable to transmit signals over long
distances. In most applications, therefore, students carrying passive
tags cannot be tracked continuously, only when they pass close to
readers at doorways and other checkpoints. Compared with active
tags, Carman says, “they’re a little less Big Brotherish.” Active tags
are powered by self-contained batteries and can transmit signals
to standard Wi-Fi access points hundreds of feet away. As a result,
they’re better suited for tracking the exact location of visitors or
physical assets like computers and projectors.
In addition to contending with privacy concerns, many schools
have yet to figure out what sort of tag would be easiest for
students to keep with them at all times. Wallet cards are
>>
RFID Tags Help Schools Keep Tabs
Using RFID technology, schools can keep track of students,
faculty and assets on the move each day.
James Woodson/Digital Vision/Getty Images
>> one option; sewing the tag into a backpack is another.
Schools also fret over replacement costs when tags inevitably
are broken or lost.
Moreover, using RFID comes with a learning curve. School district
personnel must learn to operate and manage the system, which
until recently has been unnecessarily complicated in terms
of assembling, installing and configuring all the components.
“Buying an RFID system is not like buying a DSL router that you
simply install and turn on,” Carman concedes. “These systems
have multiple components that must be assembled and made to
work together. Historically, no one vendor has been able to offer
all of those components as well as the necessary engineering and
installation capabilities.”
Turnkey Service
However, in 2007, AT&T launched a turnkey, Wi-Fi standards–
based RFID service specifically designed for the K–12 education
market. AT&T partnered with leading RFID equipment vendors to
provide Wi-Fi RFID tags and related components. AT&T provides
the RFID readers used with passive tags and the wireless LAN
gear that helps to triangulate, or pinpoint, the location of the
RFID signals, as well as the software to transform the collected
data into information that is accessible through a user-friendly,
graphical computer interface. And AT&T pulls it all together: We
design the systems and engineer the layout of RFID readers;
we upgrade each user’s local and/or wide-area network to
handle any necessary additional data traffic; and we configure
and install all the components. Where active tags are used, we
engineer the layout of Wi-Fi access points to ensure proper
coverage. AT&T can easily facilitate large-scale applications,
Carman notes, by offering schools access to our optical Ethernet
service, which can support throughputs ranging from 5 mbps to
1 gbps. Because AT&T’s solution is Wi-Fi standards–based, we
keep costs low. We can read signals both indoors and outdoors
from the same tags, and it’s scalable enough to be used to track
tens of thousands of assets.
“The potential benefits of this technology are so great that a lot
of school districts will eventually embrace it,” Carman predicts.
“The challenges, like training schools how to use them and
creating RFID tags that kids won’t lose or destroy, can be solved.
And once they are, adoption rates should take off.”
Using RFID technology
simply helps schools do more
efficiently and effectively what
they’re already doing manually.
—Kevin Carman, AT&T Associate Director,
K–12 Education Marketing
That’s good news for school administrators eager to enhance
campus security by knowing who and what enters and exits their
buildings. It’s bad news, of course, for students hoping that no
one will notice the next time they decide to play hooky.
To read more about technological trends in education and to find out how AT&T
an meet your organization’s challenges, visit us at www.corp.att.com/edu.
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