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Facebook for school.

Well not really.

I wouldn't want them scanning my face. Seems a bit extreme or invasive. Both more likely.

I'm more shocked this is just starting.

They were previously using a guestbook, so it'd be a lateral shift in security.

The reason for switching to an automated system was to lower costs, and I'm certain a camera and additional software costs slightly more than a simple login system. It's more secure, but I don't really see their usage of it as especially requiring security. It's not a significant difference between the two either way, but usually in that situation people tend toward the side of simplicity. I don't believe the staff made a bad decision but an unusual one.

You know, when I was in school, teachers had enough time to do roll call in the morning. I think they're just lazy now. The idea that this will somehow give the teachers more time to teach is laughable. It'll save 3 minutes. If that's the difference between getting an education and not, there's something more amiss.

Once I realized what the op was talking about, I thought of this book.

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow.

While the Principle may claim that it's to give teachers more time to teach, I can't get rid of the feeling that Aurora and the School just haven't thought of how such programs can be used to control students freedom.

The book is a must read and can be downloaded for free. If you find the thought of how close The Patriot Act could have lead to just a reality. That if we had stayed on course by letting our fear of terrorist hold us hostage and elected another Neo-Con to POTUS, buy a few copies to give as gifts.

It seems that the Dale Gribble personality is a lot more prevalent than you'd think.

I doubt the electrical cost would exceed even 10 dollars a month.

I wouldn't know, but almost certainly less than employee wages.

It's a glorified web camera attached to a computer in a box running some fancy biometric matching software. I'm sure they probably gouged the school about $40k per unit, but maintenance and electrical costs are probably about the same as you would incur for having a computer in a classroom. Unless you count softeare maintenance costs on the devices themselves to keep the software up to date. That probably runs about $10,000 per year would be my guess just based on costs of similar systems, assuming a fairly widespread deployment. (6 or 7 base units, probably some sort of server software setup with a sql database attached, etc)

Our school had a 5 minute long homeroom class in which attendance was taken and then handed into or sent electronically to attendance. If we missed that class or were late to it (and your homeroom teacher took attendance early and wouldn't change it..) then you had to go to attendance and get a late slip thingy. 3 lates per quarter, next one gets you detention and you get another for every late after that per quarter.

Teachers also took attendance near the beginning of each class for every period they taught. The lists get sent down to attendance at the end of school and if you were absent in class but were here for homeroom you get a cutslip. Some teachers were nice and didn't take attendance during class, or marked you down anyway if they liked you.

It was a pretty decent system. I can't imagine anything else.