Electronic ID card system at Evanjelické Lýcem. By Jakub Adamkovic.
I give a special thanks to our director of The Evanjelické Lýceum, Mrs. Edita Prostredníková, who I interviewed for this story. So now you can read interesting information which she gave directly to me.
Evanjelické Lýceum (EL) decided to get an electronic ID student card system at the end of the last school year, at the initiative of representatives of the Council of parents. Cards, in addition to monitoring attendance, provide several benefits for students such as discounts in some stores and discounts in transport, confirmation that pupils are students of the secondary school, the option of paying health insurance abroad. At the same time EL bought the program AsC agenda, which processed all documents issued by the school, preparing schedules and of course you can also monitor the attendance of students.
This system still has some drawbacks, which are due to several factors:
- students forget or lose their cards
- at the entrance to a building we cannot install turnstiles because of safety aspects; therefore, we cannot be certain who entered the building without registration
- system failure occurs only when the blackout of electric power, so the computer which registers arrivals must be restarted.
It is specifically for students, and their interest to check on arrival and departure, because during the completion of attendance there can be a discrepancy between the class book and electronic registration. In this case, the electronic registration has at least half the strength in proving the presence or absence of the students.
Like every new system that is introduced, responses were positive and also negative. Many students are harassed everyday by pulling cards from the wallet, but this system is also considered to prepare for life, because many universities and other high schools, businesses and offices have a similar system for registering. The sooner students get used to this system, the easier it will be in the future for them. Positive responses are mainly from classroom teachers - however, there is need for consistency when logging into the system.
After almost the year of using the electronic ID cards system - trial period – EL will be able to closely monitor attendance by cards next school year.