Parent/Teacher/Kid Communicator

If you're a parent, this is a familiar scenario:

Your child comes home after a long day at school, kicks off his shoes and parks in front of the TV. Later on, you ask what homework he has. He uses his "phone a friend" option to find out, because he forgot to write it down in class. Friend tells him (if friend wrote it down himself, if not a network of phone-a-friends ensues...), he goes to do it - only to discover he's forgotten all the necessary books/dictionaries/calculators/whatever at the school. Of course, you didn't check on this when you picked him up, and the school building closed hours ago, so the kid doesn't do his homework and ends up in detention.

Next morning, as he rushes out the door, he informs you that you were supposed to send something or do something or sign something that has to go with him now. Or he rushes out the door and leaves his PT clothes behind, or some other essential to the day's education. And ends up either in detention again, or writing lines until kingdom come. Which makes him all the more grumpy and school-hating the next day, the teacher p'd off at his (your) lack of competency, and turns the educational experience into one huge hate-fest!

So here's the plan.

Each kid gets a student ID card. Within that a microchip is embedded, identifying each kid as who they say they are (fingerprint recognition based). At the entry to the school and to each class is a scanner through which the card gets swiped. This tells you excatly who is where, and can also block access to those who don't belong. Call it "automated roll-call" if you will. And that saves on paper and ink and calling out who's present. Electronic record stored of attendance, no problem.

Simple enough, you say, these things already exist.

Ah, but add in a few extra features. As each kid swipes out at the end of the school day, homework is noted on his card-chip. With a couple of barcodes/chips on his books, the scanner may also be able to check his bookbag for appropriate material to complete the day's tasks. Deny exit if it's not there, so the kid can go pick up what he needs from his desk before leaving.

And then add in a centralized communication system. The school can communicate important info via that chip - just load it on the system during the day. The parent has a small scanner at home that reads it, perhaps linked to their home computer, or stand-alone. Individual notes from teacher to parent can run the same course. Reminders to take this, do that, upcoming events - all loaded electronically and accessible.

All good and well, but how do you know the parent's seen it?

Simple. Return-marking each item by the parent, using a pin number, fingerprint recognition or other non-copyable method. Back at school, as the student scans in, the data is collected and centralized. Teachers can see who has had their homework "signed", who has handed over "notes" to be read, and if there are any comments back from the parents.

Nice, hey?

Of course, in the real world kids lose their ID cards, use them as weapons and/or toys, and have learnt how to hack into the computer systems....

But a system like this would make the school/parent/kid system a whole lot easier.