University Gives Away iPhones To Curb Truancy 252
Norsefire writes "A Japanese University is giving away iPhones to its students to use the phones' GPS functionality to catch students who skip classes. The University claims students currently fake attendance by having other students answer for them during rollcall, they also said that while this can be abused by giving other students the phone, they are much less likely to do this due to the personal information, such as email, a phone generally contains."
Re:There is always an easier solution... (Score:5, Funny)
I skipped tons of classes during my undergrad degree and this enabled me to actually assignments that I wouldn't have otherwise had time for.
Congrats on your engineering degree. I hope that those skipped English classes don't interfere with your technical writing ;)
Re:Pretty sneaky, sis... (Score:4, Funny)
assuming they're dumb enough to store such information on a device owned by a third party...
They'll tell the students that they're going to do random spot checks on the phones and if there isn't any personal information on them they won't graduate.
Nice Going, Japan! (Score:5, Funny)
If "Having other students answer roll call for them" is an indetectible method of circumventing the rollcall procedures, then Japanese professors are just playing into the West's "All Asians Look Exactly Alike" stereotype. Way to go, Nihon.
Re:Why am I seeing an ad for scientology ? (Score:5, Funny)
Dear slashdot, why am I seeing an advertisement for scientology on the slashdot front page ?
Because they can't advertise on Wikipedia anymore?
There's an app for that (Score:4, Funny)
Re:There is always an easier solution... (Score:3, Funny)
are or how dumb you think it is. The facts are given: This is not your university, chances are this isn't even your culture, and attendance IS mandatory there.
Some universities are harder than others.
That's true. for all we know, this is place is called Attendance University, and these are all 4th year doctoral students in a graduate course in the science of showing up at 9AM.
In this case, the professors are merely helping hone students' ability to spoof attendance using the latest modern technology. (Furthermore, as far as we know, the most promising candidates in this program go on to do valuable research into the problem of Dog Ate My Homework.)
Re:There is always an easier solution... (Score:3, Funny)
I can see it now: a backpack full of iPhones for some poor kid to make a living while he's going to school.
Re:There is always an easier solution... (Score:3, Funny)
Suspicions rise when he's the only student in the auditorium, yet attendance is registering full...