Going to school may seem to be routine and ordinary for most children. However, a growing number of children (and parents) around the world may not feel the same.

Let's meet Sanami-chan, a 4-year old student from Ayase city, Kanagawa prefecture in the greater Tokyo area, Japan. Her mother, Megumi-san, a 33-year old house wife, usually takes Sanami-chan to her school, Ryounan preschool, located several kilometers from their home.

Since February 2006, Sanami-chan and her mates in the school started to wear some active 300 MHz UHF RFID tags attached to their rucksacks. When Sanami-chan and Megumi-san pass through the preschool's front gate in the morning, the RFID reader installed in the gate will read the identification number stored in Sanami-chan's RFID tag. The reader will then instantly transmit the ID to the school's attendance information system, which then records Sanami-chan's arrival and changes the colour of Sanami-chan's name displayed on a PC monitor from red to green.

Sanami-chan and Megumi-san (fictitious personas) could describe how the children and parents in Japan have taken part in a growing number of RFID projects that involve children.

Children Safety

Several amusement parks, such as Legoland in Billund, Denmark, Dollywood Splash Country in Tennessee, USA and Wannado City, Florida, USA, have started adopting RFID technology mainly for the purpose of tracking and pinpointing children location in the amusement parks. A child safety seat system has been developed to alert drivers if a seat buckle disengages. Children clothes could be embedded with RFID tags with a purpose of triggering an alarm and some alerts when a child wearing such clothes crosses some predetermined boundaries. Various school attendance systems are implemented in various places in Japan and some other countries across Asia.

Despite the tremendous growth of RFID technology applications for ensuring children safety, there is also some opposition regarding the use of the technology on children. The ones who oppose the use of the technology for children safety often argue that the technology application could breach children's right to privacy and dignity, like the opinion expressed by EPIC, Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU-Northern California to the Brittan School Board regarding mandatory RFID badge programme for tracking children’s movements in and around the school located in Sutter, California, USA.

Nevertheless, in a different location quite far away, Tanabe city, Wakayama prefecture, Japan, Kinki Bureau of Telecommunications released a report of an RFID experiment on children that draws a different picture through a survey on parents whose children took part in the experiment: 83% of the parents said that the experimental RFID system increased their peace of mind and most of them were willing to pay a monthly fee for this kind of service.

Beyond Safety

Children safety is not the only reason for using RFID technology in the children world. RFID technology has also found its way into the world of children education and entertainment as well.

Embedding RFID into toys for language learning, interactive toy kitchen that can detect and respond to toy food placed on its plate and hybrid gaming system are only a few from many other innovative ideas that have become popular.

If you think that children have already had enough exposure to RFID technology in the world, think again!
There is already a specific lesson designed for children that they can share opinions about the technologies used to identify them and monitor their activities, and then develop plans for new uses of RFID-enabled technologies to share with their classmates, and write essays persuading readers to use their proposed technologies.

Labels: japan, privacy, reader, rfid, tag, technology, tracking

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