Filed under: Education, iPhone
Teachers: Monitor school attendance with iPhone 3G
Here's an interesting idea. The Mainichi Daily News is reporting that Japan's Aoyama Gakuin University has distributed 550 iPhone 3Gs to staff and students so that they can use the phone's GPS capabilities to monitor class attendance. In fact, the school will cover the basic charges so that the students aren't required to absorb the extra financial burden.That seems like an awfully expensive way to accomplish what my sixth grade teacher, Sr. Dolores, did by shouting, "Caolo!" and waiting for my "Here!", but a major university has different needs (and budgets) than a tiny elementary school in Scranton.
We've seen similar large-scale iPhone adoption recently at University of Missouri's Journalism School and Abilene Christian University. Good luck to everyone involved.
[Via MacDailyNews]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
LD said 3:10PM on 5-19-2009
Just have your buddy take your phone to class.
Do they actually take attendance in college? They never did for me.
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LiqwidZero said 4:02PM on 5-19-2009
Yeah, they do. At least for my college. And the attendance policy is severe at the one I went to:
If you meet in class for once a week, you can only miss two days of class.
If you meet in class for twice a week, you can only miss four days.
etc. (keep multiplying by 2)
If you miss more than the alotted time, you can be put on academic suspention/probation.
Farris said 5:16PM on 5-19-2009
Dang, Liqwid, that's ridiculous. There are some profs at my school that include attendance with participation points, but it's not to the point where you can go on academic suspension because of it.
Mr. Brown said 6:44PM on 5-19-2009
I never had an attendance policy in undergrad, but all ABA-accredited law schools require class attendance. You can't miss more than something like 25% of class meetings... if you do, you can't take the final (which is likely your only grade).
Harkonian said 7:03PM on 5-20-2009
How does this even work? Without background processes you need to be running a location tracking app to be able to tell where the student is. Are they always expected to have the app open during school hours? What if their battery dies? Not to mention that if you are indoors you can't track your position with any accuracy anyway.
Gravy said 3:11PM on 5-19-2009
How long will it take them to realize that they are only monitoring the locations of phones, and not necessarily students?
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Ruamrudee said 3:25PM on 5-19-2009
Spoiled brats
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Urbz said 4:58PM on 5-19-2009
I'm in college and I've lost count of all the times I'm not in class... Nobody takes attendance.
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umijin said 8:43PM on 5-19-2009
I read this story on the Japanese site a couple days ago and it's a bogus move - perhaps a recruiting ploy.
Japanese undergrad institutions are notoriously lax about grades and attendance in contrast to US universities. Most students are happy with the bare minimum (D-) and don't give a damn about attendance records, just as long as they pass. Some private schools allow professors to have strict attendance policies, but with large class sizes it's tough to enforce at times (and, yes, I have taught at Japanese Uni's).
The article talks about being able to confirm (with iPhones) whether a student has come to campus or not (not specific classroom, which might be impossible given the precision of commercial gps). This usage is pointless, as a student can just blow off class, and hang out on campus somewhere.
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Macskeeball said 12:07AM on 5-20-2009
What if a student shows up to class but forgot to charge his or her iPhone?
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CRG said 1:30AM on 5-20-2009
I dropped a class once because the prof threatened to lower my grade due to poor attendance. I was getting the highest grade in the class, and had figured if I didn't need to attend to get a good grade, why waste my time? He wouldn't budge on the attendance policy, so I dropped the class.
In fact, I didn't attend many of my lower-division classes. At the beginning of the semester, I'd check the syllabus, mark the test dates on my calendar, and would attend the sessions before a test (for the review), the tests, and the sessions after a test (to get my test score back). That was it.
Got great grades, and didn't waste much time listening to lectures.
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Canelo said 9:43AM on 5-20-2009
My teacher of Programming Languages class, took attendance with his iPhone3G... I think he coded some kind of app :O
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Wolfgang said 5:05AM on 5-22-2009
Instead of monitoring the school attendance they should use the iPhone for learning purposes, e. g. iAmino - learning the amino acids
( http://www.bananaglue.de/iamino/index_e.php )
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