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In humans it is hard to detect how someone is feeling, especially when they are doing their best to hide it. What if there was a way to know how your friend or student was feeling emotionally. Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to help detect these emotions and could definitely help in the classroom. Having a computer recognize facial movements could greatly increase the way teachers are teaching their students.

The FACS was created by Dr. Paul Eckman who classified six basic emotions for a computer designed to contruct "a 3-D computer model of the face; all 44 major muscles in the model must move like human muscles." These basic emotions are happiness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise, and sadness. These are all found by the characteristic movements of the facial muscles. For example, when raising your eyebrows it sends a signal that you are surprised. When you are angry your lips tighten. This could all very well be detected while in the classroom.

In the classroom teachers normally don't know how a student is feeling. Using FACS could help improve with knowing their emotions. "A classroom computer could recognize when a student is becoming confused or bored," Dr. Huang predicts. "Then it could modify the lesson, like an effective human instructor." This could help change the students lessons for the better.

FACS is valuable in the classroom to read the emotional expressions of the students. "Using video imagery, the new emotion-recognition software tracks these facial movements - in a real face or in the painted face of Mona Lisa." This computer can do more than just calculate the basic six emotions, it can even identify mixed emotions. Most kids in the clasroom I'm sure have mixed emotions. It could be about an upcoming test that they are scared to take but are also partially happy to have it over with. With FACS they could know exactly how the student is feeling. According to the article, "Each expression is compared against a neutral face (showing no emotion)." This helps show what has changed and what the person is feeling.

The FACS could improve ways for humans and computers to communicate in the classroom. They can detect how the student is feeling on a test, the math homeowork given, or the lesson being taught in class that day. This system can help detect the six basic emotions and mixed emotions. The emotions calculated can act as a human instructor and modify lessons. Knowing that "most human communication is nonverbal" would definitely come to use in a classroom of students with different emotions. This is why the FACS is valuable and should be used in a classroom.

Score: 4