4 Ways China Is Using Technology To Monitor Its Students

Due to security and human resources-related issues, Chinese schools are boldly trying new methods to monitor students.

Here are some of the most common ones:

Smart bracelets

A school in southern China has attracted the attention of the internet by ordering 3500 smart bracelets which could track wearers’ locations via radio frequency.

Specifically, their bid notice was discovered by Weibo users. The school wants the device to not only monitor students’ locations on the campus but also measure heart rate, number of steps, and when they raise their hand in class.

The advantages of this device? The school can know its students’ locations and health conditions. However, the school’s intention is still causing a heated debate on the internet. Many parents have concerns about the confidentiality of the data. What would happen if it fell into the hand of bad people?

Smart uniforms with GPS tracking

When the world is still arguing over privacy issue, a Chines technology firm specializing in making uniforms with GPS tracking chips has denied any allegations over 24/24 surveillance.

“Smart uniform” from Guizhou Guanyu Technology Ltd. can help teachers and parents keep track of students’ movements. The company is working with 11 elementary and second schools in Guizhou province. Other uniforms with similar function were even put into use by other educational institutions way back in 2014.

The company’s legal representative told Beijing News that, only parents and teachers can access information recorded by the uniform. He affirmed that the company was committed to protecting students’ privacy.

The official website of the company said that “smart uniform” are created to automate administrative – educational activities, from supervising whether students come to class on time to assigning homework and managing scores. The uniform is equipped with two chips to track students if they leave the school premises. The data will then be cross-checked with each school’s facial recognition system.

Camera with built-in facial recognition system

After every 30 seconds, the system will automatically scan students’ faces and record their facial expressions. Students are classified based on different emotions like happy, angry, scared, confused or upset. Not only that, the system also records students’ movements like writing, reading, raising their hands to speak. It even recognizes who is nodding off.

Global Times reported that the system is called “Intelligent Classroom Behavior Management System.” Accordingly, students’ faces can replace ID cards and can be used to pay for lunch and borrow things from the library. The school’s principal said that students’ privacy is protected since the data is kept in a local server instead of the cloud.

Similar to China’s social credit, the system will evaluate, score each student in real-time. The results will be displayed on the teachers’ screens for easy monitoring.

QR codes for shower monitoring

About half a year ago, Hunan’s Changsha University of Science and Technology, put a new bathroom system into trial.

Students will have to connect their smartphones with the bathroom via Bluetooth and scan a QR code before and after showering. This helps the school know how much water each one uses up. In addition, students will no longer have to take with them different types of cards like before. But their smartphones should be waterproof ones, perhaps.

Everything sounds normal but Chinese media and netizens still react negatively to this system. Many have said that students have to download too many applications, from subject registration, lunch registration and now even showering.

To be fair, integrating technology into education is a way to automate schools and dormitories. Some schools are even using algorithms to arrange students into rooms and it is proved to be quite effective. Currently, about 60,000 education institutions, which account for one-fourth of the whole country’s number of schools, are testing AI to replace teachers in giving scores. They are also installing more facial recognition systems to monitor students’ behaviors.

Although it is to save water, the new bathroom system is criticized for the same reason as other applications: collecting users’ information.