In the article "Making Mona Lisa Smile", it talks about a new technology that enables computers to identify human emotions. The new technology is called Facial Action Coding System. At the very beginning of the article, it talks about the emtions of Mona Lisa for she is eighty-nine percetnhappy, nine percent disgusted, six percent fearful and two percent angry. Honestly, if I was forced to sit for hours and stare at nothing while some old guy painted my picture, I would not be very happy about it. The technology works by constructing a 3-D computer model of the face that it has been presented with all 44 major muscles in the model must move like human muscles. Dr. Paul Eckman, the creator of FACS (Facial Action Coding SYstem) has classified six basic emotions-happiness, surprise, anger, disgust, fear and sadness.

In paragraph six, Dr. Huange predicts that a classroom computer could recognize whena student is becoming confused or bored then it could modify the lesson, like an effective human instructor. As a student n high school, I honestly do not believe that Facial Action Coding System is necessary for a classroom. Our biology teacher makes the notes for us herself so the computer would have no way of changing anything to make it interesting. Along with the fact that most human communication us nonverbal, inclusing emotional communicaton, the computer need to understand that also. I believe that this Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a waste of time when there are more important matters at hand in this world. WIth the recent school shootings, I believe that we should be spending more time trying to make different types of affective things to protect students when a shooter enters a school. I saw an article about how a school has recently installed bullet proof "rooms" into every classroom. Whenever someone comes over the intercom, telling the school that they are under attack, the students rush into the room that can hold up to thriy to forty kids. This is what we should spend more time with. Making sure our students are safe, not trying to figure out whether the emtions of students while in class or the emotions of a painting from a few hundred years ago.

Now, I am not saying that FACS would not be helpful in some cases. It could be used with therapists who have patients that do not want to cooperate with them or a patient in a metnal hospital. The effectiveness in a classroom is very low in many cases. The facts that they can recognize the human emotion based on the muscles of the face like the zygomatice major (muscles that begin at your cheek bones) lift the corners of your mouth. Yes it does seem interesting but like I said before, it should not be used in a classroom. I believe the only communication that we should have with computers is emailing and other types of work, like typing out the next best-selling book. 