ICT and RFID in Education: Some Practical Aspects in Campus Life

The paper summarizes our preliminary findings regarding the development and implementation of a newly proposed system based on ICT and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technologies for campus access and facility usage. It is generally acknowledged that any educational environment is highly dependent upon a wide range of resources or variables such as teaching staff, research and study areas, meeting and accommodation facilities, library services, restaurant and leisure facilities, etc. The system we have devised using ICT and RFID technologies supports not only authentic transactions among all university departments, but also interconnects all levels of academic life and activity. Thus, the utility of the system ranges from access control (student/ staff/ visitor identification), attendance tracking, library check-out services and voting to grade book consulting, inventory, cashless vending, parking, laundry and copying services. Physically, the system consists of several RFID gates/readers, a data server and some network stations, all of them requiring specific structuring and integration solutions. The system is quite different from already existing ones in that it proposes an innovative access solution. Thus, the search of the ID card holder in a database has been replaced by local processing. Since one and the same card is employed to perform a variety of operations, the system has immediate and numerous utilizations.