I have had a few teachers who allocated points of the overall grade for attendance and/or participation. I don't entirely disagree with this approach; in some c

I have had a few teachers who allocated points of the overall grade for attendance and/or participation. I don't entirely disagree with this approach; in some cases students can do better in school with the right nudge. The tracking methods range from the low-fi to the high-tech: from a paper attendance checklist, to a Scantron sheet, to iClicker "student response system", to clicking buttons in an online portal. But I do feel uncomfortable with the escalation of technology being used to perform this task. Scantron sheets being fed into auto-dialers that can call the wrong parent if the teacher bubbles the wrong line. And now, some schools are now running pilots using facial recognition attendance systems.