University uses iPhones for attendance roll

A university in Japan is now giving its students free Apple iPhones for personal use, but the devices will be used to check the students’ attendance in class.

The project is taking place outside Tokyo at Aoyama Gakuin University, and will begin with 550 first and second year students in June.

Instead of having the lecturer take a roll call, students type their university identification number into an application. The lecturer then checks which students have logged in via a database.

“We don’t want to use this to simply take attendance. Our hope is to use this to develop a classroom where students and teachers can discuss various topics,” professor Yasuhiro Iijima told Itnews.com.au, also saying the trial does not breach privacy laws.

“With Japanese cell phones it’s possible that the location data is automatically sent. However, with the iPhone, you must always confirm before the GPS data can be sent.”