IBM beats HP and Dell to the roll-call

Peter Dinham
Sunday, 10 May 2009 14:17

IT Industry - Deals

IBM has beaten off HP and Dell to win a contract deploying an electronic classroom student roll call system at a Sydney girls’ private college.

Under the contract with Pymble Ladies’ College, IBM has partnered with Datacom to install the roll call system using IBM interactive technology, which the school says will significantly increase learning time by almost 4 hours per week.
 
Installed in the college's senior school classrooms and Library, the IBM AnyPlace Kiosks system provides integrated self-service, which the school says allows students to record real time roll call with minimal disruption and gain access to their most up-to-date individual class and activity timetables - all with a swipe of their student card.

Rathika Suresh, director of information technology at the college says the school opted for the IBM and partner Datacom after reviewing and assessing technology from IBM and other vendors including HP and Dell. He says the IBM system will assist in the delivery of a new solution to not only meet core safety and attendance recording requirements, but to also be scalable to meet future functionality requirements.

“Prior to installing the kiosks, and to meet its duty of care to record and maintain an accurate attendance register for every student in the school for every period of the day, the college was using a Web-based system to record roll call.  However, the process took a minimum of 10 minutes of valuable class time and the college was determined to return this time to teaching without compromising on the accuracy of the attendance record.”

Suresh says that using the touch screen kiosks and swipe card system, students mark their attendance in academic and co-curricular classes using their smart student card, with the system linking with the events database which records all the events, excursions and co-curricular activities that the student is involved in as well as linking into the students and teachers timetable. 

“Students can swipe their cards to gain access to up-to-date individual schedules such as music lessons, sports commitments, messages and when assignments are due.”
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