UK School Uses Facial Recognition Software to Take Attendance

The City of Ely Community College in the UK is using facial recognition technology to take attendance. Instead of doing a roll call, students check in and out of the building by having their faces scanned by an infa-red light. The scanned image is then compared against an archived image, and matched up to make sure it’s  them.

It’s reported both students and teachers are loving the new system. The school’s principal claims the staff saves about an hour and a half a day that would have been normally used to manually record attendance data, and that students enjoy the hi-tech nature of the gizmo. Although this system is undoubtedly a time saver, it does feel just a little bit too big brother-ish.

[via Engadget]