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BeHere app uses iBeacons to automatically take attendance as students enter the classroom

BeHere-app

A new app called BeHere aimed at teachers uses Apple’s new Bluetooth LE iBeacon technology to recognize students and automatically take attendance as they enter a classroom.

With the BeHere app installed, the teacher’s iPad acts as an iBeacon and students entering the classroom with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch will automatically appear in the app with a profile picture and name. Students will have to install the app on their device too, but thanks to recent iBeacon improvements in iOS 7.1, they won’t have to even open the app or take the device out of their pocket to be recognized as they walk in. 

The BeHere app also has a few other interesting features for the classroom environment. From within the app, students can tap a button to request help from a teacher. The teacher is then presented with an ordered queue of students waiting for assistance.

The company is currently testing the app with a number of partners at colleges, but the app is now available for all to download from the App Store.

iBeacon technology is quickly being adopted in many different settings since Apple first introduced it alongside iOS 7 last year. First rolling out in retail environments like the Apple Store and Macy’s, the technology is also being used at events like the recent SXSW festival and professional sporting events to allow for speedy check-in features and relevant location-based notifications. More apps have also been hitting the App Store recently too. A new app called ‘Placed’  that we told you about recently allows users to setup context-aware app launching using iBeacons at home.

BeHere is available as a free download for iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad on the App Store.

BeHere from Beelieve on Vimeo.

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Comments

  1. yuniverse7 - 10 years ago

    As long as ALL of your students have iOS devices…

  2. John Smith - 10 years ago

    yuniverse7

    Part of the apple package/marketing … dear school board: buy all your students an iPad, not another brand, and your teachers never need take another register.

    Not as OTT as it sounds …

    https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/06/19Apple-Awarded-30-Million-iPad-Deal-From-LA-Unified-School-District.html

  3. It’s a good start but there are quite a few hurdles to overcome. All students would need to have iOS devices until they open it up to Android and other platforms. Then you have the problem of getting the students to actually install the app. Does anyone remember what being a stundent was like, installing a school app would not be high on the priority list although I admit I am thinking more of the high school crowd. Also how far is the range? students will obviously if they can walk by the class to be marked there and then take off. So perhaps their seat in the clase should be marked as the spot and until they sit they wouldn’t be marked as present. If the teacher still has to do manual work then the whole point kind of flies out the window. It’s interesting though and brings with it so many posibilites.

  4. Chris Cooper (@clcooper) - 10 years ago

    Or pass your ipod to your friends backback so you can be checked in but ditch class :-)

  5. Mike Knopp (@mknopp) - 10 years ago

    Dang it. They beat me too it. I was part way through developing an app similar to this for my wife, who teachers 5th grade. Although, I will say that I hadn’t thought of using iBeacon that way.

    As for those of you mentioning the issue of the students having iOS devices. This would really only be practical for schools that have a one-to-one program for iOS devices, which there are numerous schools. The school where my wife teaches and my children attend has a one-to-one iPad program for all students in the 5th grade and above. Getting the students to install the app is also no problem. Even if it isn’t implemented district wide, which would allow them to place it as a default app administered by the IT dept, my wife regularly has her students install apps for a project or assignment.

    • Jurgis Ŝalna - 10 years ago

      How about just tracking who connected to your wifi network?

    • Stacie H. (@esmeraldus) - 10 years ago

      Well, I’ll tell you what I want, and would pay for.

      I have an iPad that I bring to class with me. I could set it up at a station.

      I would like the ability to set up x number of classes (and by the way, I am an adjunct, so during account creation it would be nice not to limit people to a single university), and import rosters via CSV, but also add students later manually.

      Once classes are set up and students have been added, with fields for first name, last name, student ID, class time, class days, then… (custom field? I might be forgetting useful fields)

      I’d like them to be able to log in with a PIN. With a ticky box, maybe, to make this their student ID number or a four-digit number they set up.

      Optionally, because I don’t even have the slightest clue how hard this would be, they could log in on a work station but the instructor could limit the IP addresses so they can’t do it from home. Under advanced options, naturally.

      While I am dreaming about things, it marks students tardy after x minutes and absent after y minutes.

      In even better dreams it generates weekly reports that I could somehow import or export into Blackboard.

      Depending on how much of this stuff it does and how easy it is to use, it would be worth a lot to me. I spent literally eight hours today looking for something that would do this.

  6. iMacheads - 10 years ago

    Reblogged this on iMacheads.

    • herb02135go - 10 years ago

      Why not just put a tag on each kids’s ear, like cattle, then have a scanner at the door?

      This would save the teaches, what, 30 seconds that they’d normally do to see which students are there? Instead, they’d see which student’s gadget was there.

      Another “solution” in search of a problem. Your tax dollars at work.

      • iMacheads - 10 years ago

        technology at its finest!

  7. Jurgis Ŝalna - 10 years ago

    Wow. Yesterday I was watching this video and heard exactly same question – how to build application that tracks student attendance!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2kweAWsjpE&t=22m30s

  8. Flo (@verpeiler) - 10 years ago

    a privacy nightmare.. but hey, the US have given up privacy anyway… go on.

  9. Bruno Ramos - 10 years ago

    What behaves as an iBeacon? The teacher’s iPad or the student’s iPhone? or both?

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.