BETT – Biometrics 0
The world of Biometrics in Schools gets larger and more complex by the year! I was particularly looking for Biometric Registration systems and saw a few options… Not had a chance to look at them in great detail yet but these are the ones that caught my eye whilst walking round BETT.
LiveRegister:
Live Register is small robust box that has a fingerprint scanner used for AM/PM registration. A student simply places their finger on the scanner and a second or so later they are marked as present with this data being passed on to SIMS. New this year the system also allows ‘Signing in/out’ so that 6th Formers and Boarders could use the system to indicate they are going off-site or returning. The boxes are about £550 each plus software licence – I reckon an average sized school could install this for about £15K. They were also demoing a version that included a 7″ display screen which looked like it might have some potential!
DRS:
DRS have been in the registration game for a long time being the main supplier of OMR forms used in many schools. They also offer a e-registration system which looks quite capable and again feeds into SIMS. Their system for signing in/out requires a separate scanner to be setup for this purpose which would work really well if most people leave via reception etc – but wouldn’t work as well on our wide site… Their boxes were about £850 each (which included one main terminal and 2 subsidiary scanners)
Aurora:
Aurora are very much the wildcard entry into the world of school based Biometrics as rather than the traditional finger-print approach taken by others this uses ‘facial recognition’. The student walks up to the box, enters a 4-digit pin then the internal camera checks the person matches the pin and registers then (again passing data to SIMS). This is technologically an interesting solution, but with the added element of the need for a pin and the fact that the boxes are around £3,500 this is not a cheap or simple solution – however definitely one to keep an eye on!
The strange but appealing product that also caught my eye whilst wondering round wasn’t related to registration but would be great addition to any school already using biometric registration. It is called “Password Manager” and was made by BioStore. Whenever a student forgets their password they simply go up to the machine place their fingerprint on the pad and it creates a temporary password for the (valid for 30mins) so they can login and reset it without having to bother the ICT techs… All this happens in about 7 seconds – Would be great for the start of terms!!