Is Technology Valuable in the Classroom?

New software has been developed that improves the accuracy in perceiving the emotions of others. The new software can now detect exactly how other people are feeling even when they are trying to hide their emotions. Facial Action Coding System has promising applications for a variety of industries. Mona Lisa being on of the pictures used to detect her emotions that were captured long ago.

Dr. Huang and his colleague are experts at developing better ways for humans and computers to communicate. If the Facial Action Coding System was apart of the classroom, it will essentially distract students from their work. If school corporations were to bring Facial Action Coding System into the school, I personally think the schools should make it an elective class due to the fact that it may make students distracted from their work.

The process begins when the computer constructs a 3-D computer model of the face; all 44 major muscles in the model must move like human muscles. Movement of one or more muscles is called an "action unit." Dr. Paul Eckman, the creator of the Facial Action Coding System classified the six basic actions as happiness, surprise, amger, disgust, fear, and sadness, and then associated each with characteristic movements of the facial muscles.

During the process, each expression is compared against a neutral face, also showing no emotion. Although, I think that having the Facial Action Coding System in schools, we perform "calculations" on one another each day. Humans can tell when a friend is feeling "down" or simply having a bad day. Just like when humans are watching movies, one can figure how the person is feeling by watching the actions around them happening or by their expressions presented on their face.

The Mona Lisa demonstration is really intended to bring a smile to your face, while it shows just how much this computer can do. "A classroom computer could regonize when a student is becoming confused or bored," Dr. Huang predicts. Having a computer in a room would also help modify the lesson as if the teacher were there. Today, most human communication is nonverbal, including emotion communication making it almost impossible to figure out what one is thinking or saying.

According to the Facial Feedback Theory of Emotion, moving your facial muscles not only expresses emotions, but also may even produce them. Each person expressed their emotions differently. Empathy may happen because we unconsiously imitate another peroson's facial expressions. Designing the Facial Action Coding System helped humans learn the process of changing facial expressions and reading each others minds and emotions. Whoever would have thought that making faces could reveal so much about the science of emotions!