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Tag your tots: RFID chips for preschoolers

Posted: 09/01/10 01:42 PM

By Steve Henn

So what do you do if you are a hard working school superintendent whose school system’s so strapped for cash that you don’t have enough teachers or aids to keep track of your pre-k kids, or make sure they actually eat lunch?

Seattle Municipal Archives

Well, according to the AP, Contra Costa County in California used a $50,000 federal grant to buy jerseys with RFID tags to help keep tabs on their tots. School officials say the system will save the district thousands of hours of staff time and could pay for itself in less than a year.

But if you can’t keep track of your kids, can you really expect to teach them to read?

Comments | Filed Under: rfid education privacy children

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What will we do with all this "white space"?

09/26/10 11:15 AM

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There’s a vote coming up this week in Washington that will have a big impact on how you use the internet, what’s available to you, how much faster you’ll be able to get things online. On Thursday, the FCC is expected to open up unused parts of the broadcast spectrum, a lot of people call it “white space”. This is space that was positioned to be something of a buffer between television stations but such padding is proving less essential since the conversion to digital TV.

On today’s show, we talk to Glenn Fleishman from Wi-Fi Networking News and The Economist about how the spectrum works and what kind of new space we’re talking about. We also check in with Tim Wu from Columbia Law School about the companies that will look to use the space and what it all might mean for you and me as internet consumers.