BENGALURU: ISRO is working on a system to ensure that teachers do not bunk classes. With complaints that teachers only come on salary day or only mark attendance but do not really stay in school from common to rural India, education officials have felt the need to keep track of real-time attendance of teachers in rural schools.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is working on a low-cost solution, using geo-spatial technology. The National Remote Sensing Centre of ISRO is coming up with a system which will help monitor teachers using location-based services and biometrics.
What a headmaster needs is an inexpensive portable biometric sensor which costs Rs 1,500 in the market. The sensor has to be attached to a mobile phone. Teachers will have to enter their biometrics on the phone. However, since it’s a portable device, there are chances of proxy attendance from a location outside the school. Hence, the mobile’s GPS location and the time stamping register of the location of the device is geo-tagged.
“Since the coordinates and time stamping are from the satellite and cannot be tampered with, the biometrics are automatically authenticated. Pre-formatted reports can be generated with the data on a daily, fortnightly or monthly basis,” said Uday Raj, project director of SIS-DP. He presented the feasibility of the prototype during the launch of the Bhuvan Panchayat Version 3, a two-and-a-half year project that will learn the problems of the Panchayat Raj system and give simple space-based solutions.
The portable biometric system is a simple low-cost solution that can also be used for checking labourers working on the field, said officials from the department. Since the software is on an open source platform, it is easier to develop and deploy it at a low cost across 2.56 lakh gram panchayats across the country, added the official.
The system needs to be packaged (interface improved and made simple at primary school level) for making it operational, said Raj. Geo-tagging technology can be used for making roads better as well by tracking the speed of the vehicle to know where the potholes are.