))) Technology at Work: RFID Moves to the Head of the Class

January 1, 2004

Enterprise Charter School, Buffalo, N.Y, is taking a fresh approach to learning and school administration. They sought a solution that could utilize RFID to streamline the school's processes while also testing the leading edge of technology in education.

RFID automates the identification of people and assets. By implementing an RFID-enabled, universal ID card, the school's attendance has been streamlined.

"Barcode, smartcard, and magstripe were reviewed. In all cases it lacked the security and universal capabilities of RFID," says David M. Straitiff, president and CEO of Intuitek, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based systems integration and product development company.

"By using the next generation beyond mag stripe for access control and security, the school can make the investment in a single technology and use one card to keep track of everything from attendance records, library books and cafeteria purchases," says Kelly Stark, access control business unit manager, TI-RFid™ Systems, New Orleans.

The client was interested in streamlining attendance-taking, but the fact that RFID could couple student, faculty and staff time and attendance with building access control was exceptionally interesting to the client. In addition, they were looking for a solution that could address their immediate needs, but remain scalable and flexible enough grow into other functions within the school. The idea of a universal ID card that could carry a unique identification really struck a chord with this client.

What was the ultimate solution?

"One of our initial challenges of providing a universal card solution at Enterprise Charter School was the integration with the existing access control system. The Texas Instruments (TI) S6400 access control readers and vicinity cards became the key to our solution by providing a seamless integration with the security system while giving us the flexibility of an ISO15693 compliant card," Stratiff says.

First was issuing students and staff a Texas Instruments RFID card compliant with the ISO15693 standard. These cards are printed on a DataCard printer customized by Intuitek to support RFID reading and writing. This printer is coupled with Intuitek's ID Card generating software that prints, indexes, and encodes an RFID card in one step.

In practice, the cards can be used in multiple applications with a range of ISO15693 compliant devices, such as building entrances and two Intuitek kiosks, which are RFID-enabled. The latter runs the attendance application, where students wave their ID card to be checked into school. They also serve a second purpose as a general information kiosk when not used for RFID applications.

The client is considering plans to add readers in the cafeteria for lunch programs, in the library for book check-out, and in the computer lab for access control using the same universal ID card.

"We feel this technology allows us to streamline our attendance and building security needs while reducing our administrative time," says Gary Stillman, principal of Enterprise Charter School.