News from The Wellensian Association (Wells Cathedral School) of a world-first computer app to tag names to faces in school photos. Chairman George Bunting says “Our archive pictures are a precious memory of our alumni but, as in many schools, the photos had no names. We were surprised to find that (other than using insecure social media) we could not find a crowdsource photo naming app anywhere in the world. So we set out to build one!”
The Wellensians first found the best face framing software in Canada and then joined with UK archive specialist SDS Group to build the app they have called
WhoZatFace which is now available to other alumni societies and schools.
The app enables schools to upload photos to a school branded secure website.
WhoZatFace then finds and frames all the faces (even on whole school photos with many hundreds of people). Alumni and friends are then sent a personal password to access the site, browse photos that they remember and fill in names against each frame. The suggestions are then moderated before being preserved for future generations.
George says, “As well as saving information about our past pupils that could otherwise be lost forever, we saw this as a good way of re-engaging with our alumni. We have found that almost all have been interested in contributing, even if they only remember a few names. We have found it best to suggest they focus on a particular photo to start with but the whole archive is available.
WhoZatFace is now going to be accessible from within a logon to our alumni website (hosted by
InTouch) and we anticipate that this will bring a lot of new traffic to our news and events pages. Links to
ToucanTech and
Potentiality are also available and
Graduway will be on stream later this year.
“We have tried to keep both the Contributor and Administrator interfaces as straightforward as possible but we shall be interested to hear the views of other users so that we can further improve it. We are hoping that other schools and societies take up
WhoZatFace to help recover the development costs. We also see a good deal of potential in other sectors.”
George Bunting can be contacted at chairman@oldws.org.uk, please get in touch if you would like access to the
WhoZatFace demonstration website.
