A Technology That Reveals Your Feelings

Memo to students: Think you can fool your teacher when you’re not paying attention? Think again. In the not-too-distant future, a laptop flashing a graph tracking classroom attention in real time could give you away. By the end of 2015, as many as 1,000 schools in the U.S. and Canada could be using a technology that monitors students, says Rich Cheston, chief solutions officer at Stoneware, a Lenovo unit that makes classroom management software. Stoneware will soon incorporate emotions analytics into one of its products to track attention in the classroom. A cousin of facial recognition, emotions analytics relies on video of facial expressions.

The teachers “can see it as they are teaching, so they can determine when to take corrective action,” Cheston says. His product will come out in September, and then he will start marketing it to schools.