Sessions

Teaching reading with tech: How Readizy helps EFL teachers

Teaching with tech, if works appropriately, will facilitate teachers in their instruction. Teaching with tech may appear in different forms, with the majority of teachers using technologies directly in their classrooms. However, preparing for the class and evaluating students’ performance with proper technologies can also be part of teaching with tech, as they indirectly facilitate teachers to plan, organize, and evaluate their instructional practice and student performance. In our presentation, we introduced Readizy, a reading diagnosis technology, to facilitate teachers with their reading instruction. Readizy is an artificial intelligence technology through facial expression recognition techniques to help EFL teachers evaluate the reading text and assess students’ reading proficiency. In response to how this technology facilitates teaching, we present our rationale in two aspects: Readizy helps teachers screen and select text materials that are fit to their students’ actual reading proficiency levels; it also helps teachers diagnose their students’ comprehension of the reading text through their emotions, including excitement, joy, anxiety, and boredom. In our actual presentation, we also report how this tech has worked in our sampled reading classes and provide attendees with a demo on how it works to help our reading instruction.