Add Category
Beijing: A Chinese school has installed facial recognition technology to monitor how attentive students are in class.
Every movement of pupils at Hangzhou Number 11 High School in eastern China is watched by three cameras positioned above the blackboard.
A man watches as a visitor tries out a facial recognition display at a booth for Chinese tech firm Ping'an Technology at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing.
Photo: APThe "smart classroom behaviour management system," or "smart eye", is the latest surveillance equipment to be rolled out in China, where leaders have rushed to use technology to monitor the wider population. The system had been installed in one classroom, but would be deployed across the school by the summer, said the headmaster, Ni Ziyuan.
Some students are already changing their behaviour due to the increased monitoring.
"Previously, when I had classes that I didn't like much, I would maybe take naps on the desk, or flick through other textbooks," one student told Hangzhou.com, a news website run by the central government. "But I don't dare be distracted after the cameras were installed. It's like a pair of eyes are watching me."