In college, or even in high school, did you ever take a self imposed cut day? Were you ever inspired by the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to take your own day off? Thanks to 2010s technology, your Ferris Bueller days might be over.
There is a new app called Class 120. It has a message of go to class or be tracked! ?You can thank Indianapolis, Indiana based company called Core Principal and it’s CEO Jeff Whorley. Class 120 will alert a parent or whoever is flipping the tuition bill when the student failed to attend class. The smartphone app tracks a student by a geographical system that tells someone what class students are supposed to be and whether they’re there or not. But here are two keys: If the student misses class, Class 120 doesn’t tell you where he/she is. And for this app to work, students have to program their class schedules in the smartphone. So far, this app is connected to 2,000 campuses.
These are two reasons why I’m not buying into this app. First, it can easily be manipulated. All the student has to do is not program the schedule in the smartphone and he/she can do whatever. Plus, it has a big brother ‘I’m tracking you’ element to it. When I was in college, I didn’t need an app to urge me to class. All the professor had to say was, “Miss this amount of classes and you automatically get an F or an I (incomplete).” Most of my peers got that message as well. And as expensive as college was even then, and way more expensive now, I didn’t want to rip off my supporters by failing to show up. But I do applaud ?Mr. Jeff Whorley for drawing the line. At least Class 120 doesn’t tell you where they are when they don’t go to class. At least it gives you that privacy and respect. But Whorley believes this app is needed to combat wasting billions of dollars a year on missed classes, which often leads to people flunking or dropping out. What do you say?