Having spent a number of years living in Russia, I can imagine that taking a school trip there might be a little challenging. So I was really excited to be involved in a project designed to make the business of keeping track of people – in a very foreign land – a whole lot easier. A few NFC handsets, a java midlet, some RFID wrist bands and an established call centre is all it took!
How does it work?
All students on the trip wear a wrist band. The band has a printed phone number, a unique serial number and an embedded RFID chip, with a corresponding unique ID. And the teachers carry NFC phones to read these wristbands. In a simple headcount scenario, students getting back onto the coach after a visit to Lenin’s Mausoleum hold out their arm as they pass the teacher who simply taps their wristband with the phone as they board the coach.
How is this better?
If the count is down, the teacher in charge knows immediately who is missing, has the option to call or text the student straight away and also has instant access to this person’s EHIC and passport information. Feedback from teachers on the trip highlighted the availability of information as one of the main benefits of this system.
From the student’s perspective, separated from the group and possibly feeling unwell, it’s easy to alert a passerby to call the number on the wrist band. The call centre operator asks the passerby to read out the printed ID, lets the passerby know any important information about the student – for example, the student is diabetic – and informs the teacher of the whereabouts of the student.
How safe is the information?
No information about the student is stored on the wristband chip and in order to read the information on the phone, you need a “master” wristband and a PIN. The information about each student is held in a secure data centre, accessed through a secure internet gateway. Another major appeal of this system is that it eliminates a lot of paper shuffling – parents are responsible for keeping each child’s records up to date and do so through an easy web interface.
The service is operated by AlertID.
