The federal government is financing the development of a smartphone app that will use facial recognition technology to check attendance in college classrooms.The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $50,000 to Missouri University on Jan. 2 for the project that will record videos to create “face tracklets” of students.The project is necessary, the grant argues, because checking attendance the old fashioned way is too hard.“Checking attendance in scenarios such as classrooms commonly needs an instructor to recognize each student one by one by reading the names on a roster or ask students to sign up the attendance sheet,” the grant explains....