[De La Salle University] Revolutionizing Reading: AI, Gamification, and Personalization in Canvas
Good afternoon, everyone. Am once again, I am Alexis Mineta from De La Salle University. This is actually my second time here in CanvasCon Philippines. But, last year, I focused on the technical part of Canvas, which is the mastery paths, the credentials, badgings. But for this year, I would like to focus on the pedagogical side. And on the motivational side of using all of this technology in teaching and helping our students learn.
So, my concern My talk started with an alarming concern that maybe all of you have heard before, or who are currently trying to create programs on how to address this. Which is obviously in my title. So, which is the reading crisis in the Philippines. So, for today, as of the latest report from PISA, and even the reports from AdCom and PSA, majority of the senior high school graduates are functionally literate, wherein twenty one percent lack sufficient reading comprehension. And this could This is alarming.
And I think, or maybe, some of you have felt this crisis in your classrooms and could agree to this. K. Aside from that, this is only the senior high school. Aside from that, eighteen point ninety six million Filipino junior and senior high school graduates are considering are considered functionally illiterate, which means they can read, write, and compute, but cannot comprehend a simple story. This is very obvious in social media on how they interpret things.
And not just in young people, but maybe in the older ones, they interpret things differently. And right now, they can't even determine the the difference with the real picture and AI picture. That is alarming. And this boils down to the fact that their literacy rate is concerning. Now, how about in higher education? I think majority of the people here are from the higher education.
So, in higher education, we have a different picture. So in higher education, we have ninety seven point three percent were were in basic literacy of the students. That's high. They are good. Their literacy rate is good.
And their function that literacy is high as well. So meaning, they are they have good literacy rate. Now, the question is, should we be celebrating this? Maybe it could be a good thing to celebrate that the students that we produce from our colleges and universities are literate because it means that we are doing our job. Right? But did you know that only twenty four percent of Filipino students was able to graduate college? So meaning, the remaining seventy five percent didn't even get to college. The which means, kayama tas yung literacy rate from the higher education is because majority of student didn't get there.
And this is where I want to come from from this talk to address problems like this because it is affecting so much society right now. So, now, we have You have been talking about emerging technologies for this day. And maybe, you've been exploring different technologies as part of our jobs. Right? So, let me just show you three emerging technologies that we have right now. And, I've heard many people talked about today.
So, the first one is gamification. So, a while ago, you've seen how other schools gamify their modules, using power ups, or maybe using different techniques to make learning engaging. So, gamification has been there, even before the pandemic and even in a traditional classroom setup wherein our teachers use games to engage us, something like that. So, this is the first emerging technology that we have. The second one is the Artificial Intelligence.
So, I believe everyone is already aware of Artificial Intelligence, such as Gemini and ChatGPT. So, A while ago, someone have shown you how to use Gemini to streamline your work as a faculty. So, that is also one of the technologies emerging right now. So, I believe the fear towards AI is Sorry to subside, and now we are heading towards on how exactly do we use it. And some of the speakers today have shared to you how.
And last is the use of learning management system, specifically Canvas learning management system. So for those who have been using Canvas learning management system, I I think we could agree that it helped us a lot on how to to give assignments, to track the student progress of our students. Now, what will happen if we combine this all together? So first is for the gamification. So we can use gamification to make reading practice more engaging, motivating, encouraging, consistent skill development through challenges, rewards, and visible progress. So, you've seen a while ago how it could really encourage students to learn through those game elements like points, badges, leaderboards that is possible with Canvas.
Now, we have AI. We can use AI to brainstorm adaptive learning pathways. So you can ask ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever AI that you're using to convert your learning materials into different pathways. So, pathways could be addressing the different learning style of students. Pathways could be addressing the different preference of the students or maybe their current level in learning.
So in the context of reading, you can use ChatGPT to create reading materials that is aligned with the current level of your students because that is one thing that is hard to address. So, if you are I used to be an English teacher before I got into educational technology path. And one frustration is, in a class of maybe twenty, three of them is having a hard time to read. And, it's hard to focus on them because some of some of the students are getting bored. And with Pathways, we can let them read the same material.
So, for example, a piece of literary a literature piece. And then, artificial intelligence will create versions of it. If you're familiar with McGraw Hill, they have something like this, Literacy three thousand, wherein one article has ten versions based on the Lexile level. So you can do that with ChatGPT in just one prompt. So you can ask them to create different versions of that reading material.
Next is, you can use AI to generate vocabulary scaffolding because this is also another issue in reading. So, if how can you ask students to read even the simplest reading material if they don't know any vocabulary words at all? So, with ChatGPT, you can just simply ask them ask it to generate the vocabulary. So when I try this Prompt convert, like, for example, a parabol, because that's the easy easy story to share. A parabol, convert this parabol into four versions based on this Lexile levels. Lexile.
And then, also, get the vocabulary words that they need to learn first. So you can ask Chatchipiti to to do that already. Next is you can ask AI to construct personalized feedback. So, every time that your students answer the drills, the worksheets that has something to do with what they read, You can already ask AI to generate feedback so that they would be more aware of what they have to do next time. Next is convert.
Convert reading materials to various reading like science. Convert text to speech. So you can ask AI to convert text to speech so that you can embed it in your Canvas pages. So, as they read, they could be reading along with that AI. Then you can also use that as part of their learning pathways if they prefer an AI who speaks like a Gen Z or make the the accent is like a Gen Z or maybe a British accent or maybe other accent that you want.
So, you can do that with AI. Although, I'm not sure if that is possible with ChatGPT, but you can do that with AI. You can also ask AI to convert speech to text. So, there are tools right now One tool that I know is H5P five and then HYP could determine if the way they read it is correct. So, maybe you have the ten vocabulary words already, and then they will be having to You will require them to read, to be able to read them verbally or orally before they could move forward, H5P could do that.
And maybe some other tools can do that. As na mga park talaga siya as correct. So, yun. Taswang ppili in yan langgan is Filipino English. Parenabas accurate yung kanilang pronunciation.
Hiya. And next is we can use AI to convert text to image. Social media wherein people create images from AI. So, if we're going to contextualize it to help their reading comprehension of students, so we can use this to help them visualize what they are reading, to to support their vocabulary building. Or maybe on the other way around, you want to make sure if they really understand a reading material.
You can ask them to prompt AI to express what they have understood with what they read. Now, when it comes to Canvas, we can use outcomes to have a clear picture of their current reading comprehension level. So, outcomes is, I think, one of the least or underutilized tool of Canvas, but this could be a powerful tool if you're going to use it to the maximum level. So, outcomes is a feature of Canvas wherein you can tag each learning question, each rubric to a learning outcome that you want to measure. And when you use this, you will be able to see the current mastery level for each for each learning outcome.
So, for example, you want to know if they could if they could identify the theme already, if they could identify the characterization of the characters, so you can clearly identify. So, this is essential because it's hard to do this in simple classroom observations because some classroom observations could be scripted. This is also hard to do in just looking at the scores because the nine over ten or maybe nine over twenty of student one could be a Different Picture from the nine over twenty results of student two. And, to give us a clearer picture, we have outcomes. Next, we have mastery paths, which was shared a while ago.
So you can use mastery paths to automatically direct students to the correct reading materials that they need according to their level. And last is, we can use Canvas credentials to gamify our modules and assessment so that we could give them badges that they could look forward to as they try to use or to start to read using your modules. So with Canvas credentials, especially the premium version, You can assign badges for each assignment, for each quiz. So if they receive this score, they will get this badge. And badge could have points, and then it could be stacked together to be in the leaderboard.
Atom of no. You can also use new quizzes to provide engaging and interactive assessments because with new quizzes, we can use the stimuli stimuli tool wherein there would be reading material, and then there will be follow-up questions along with the reading material. So as they read, they are answering questions. So, you can do that with new quizzes. So, I would like to encourage everyone to maximize this emerging technologies to address the learning poverty crisis here in the Philippines.
This is a serious issue that we are facing right now, most especially in the basic education. But, eventually, the higher education will suffer once those students are in the higher education. So, I would like to share to everyone. Now, let's not be afraid of technology. So, when AI got popular initially, everyone is so scared.
When the AI first entered our classrooms with AI generated essays. It felt like a threat. Not just AI, but other technology. I remember when Google was just emerging when I was young, teachers have the same reaction. So, it felt like it might take away what makes us as teachers.
But maybe, AI was never meant to replace us, but to release us, to give us time to do the things that we need to do as teachers. So, maybe some of you, you are doing other things aside from teaching. You are preparing materials for a long time. You are checking. You are arranging events for your students.
Yung mga sinasalayanil lang events. So, there are so many things to do. But AI could be something that could help us. So, let us use the time saved as time reinvested. Spend it on what matters most.
So, every hour AI gives back in a in an hour, we can spend where it matters most, reading with a struggling child, sparkling curiosity in a classroom, reminding a student that they are seen and capable. These are the things that we should do every time that we save time because of this technology. Netflix or the senate hearing. So, let's use our time save for these things that we have. And next is, let's treat save time as secret time.
Let's be wise and brave enough to use this gift well. So, technology is a gift or it could become a gift if we will look at it closely. And, let us turn this save time for shaping lives, igniting minds, and raising a generation that not only reads, but leads. So, this is what we want for our student. A young generation that leads the nation, that could be the hope of our society because right now, it seems hopeless.
But the future is in our hands as our teachers. And I think having a good reading comprehension is a good start because through having reading comprehension, students can be critical with what they are seeing online, what they are reading online in the comment section that could be biased, that could be flooded with trolls. And their opinions could be influenced easily if they don't have enough reading comprehension. So, let us use save time as sacred time. So that we could make the future that we want possible.
Not just for us, but for our students. Because at the end of the day, AI or any form of technology is not hero of this story. The hero of this story are you teachers. We teachers are the hero of this story. So, right now, we are feeling hopeless or maybe some of you angry like me about what is happening in our country.
But there is hope. You can say to your sitmate, Peter is hope, and you are the hero. We are the hero. Technology to make this happen. Thank you so much.
So, my concern My talk started with an alarming concern that maybe all of you have heard before, or who are currently trying to create programs on how to address this. Which is obviously in my title. So, which is the reading crisis in the Philippines. So, for today, as of the latest report from PISA, and even the reports from AdCom and PSA, majority of the senior high school graduates are functionally literate, wherein twenty one percent lack sufficient reading comprehension. And this could This is alarming.
And I think, or maybe, some of you have felt this crisis in your classrooms and could agree to this. K. Aside from that, this is only the senior high school. Aside from that, eighteen point ninety six million Filipino junior and senior high school graduates are considering are considered functionally illiterate, which means they can read, write, and compute, but cannot comprehend a simple story. This is very obvious in social media on how they interpret things.
And not just in young people, but maybe in the older ones, they interpret things differently. And right now, they can't even determine the the difference with the real picture and AI picture. That is alarming. And this boils down to the fact that their literacy rate is concerning. Now, how about in higher education? I think majority of the people here are from the higher education.
So, in higher education, we have a different picture. So in higher education, we have ninety seven point three percent were were in basic literacy of the students. That's high. They are good. Their literacy rate is good.
And their function that literacy is high as well. So meaning, they are they have good literacy rate. Now, the question is, should we be celebrating this? Maybe it could be a good thing to celebrate that the students that we produce from our colleges and universities are literate because it means that we are doing our job. Right? But did you know that only twenty four percent of Filipino students was able to graduate college? So meaning, the remaining seventy five percent didn't even get to college. The which means, kayama tas yung literacy rate from the higher education is because majority of student didn't get there.
And this is where I want to come from from this talk to address problems like this because it is affecting so much society right now. So, now, we have You have been talking about emerging technologies for this day. And maybe, you've been exploring different technologies as part of our jobs. Right? So, let me just show you three emerging technologies that we have right now. And, I've heard many people talked about today.
So, the first one is gamification. So, a while ago, you've seen how other schools gamify their modules, using power ups, or maybe using different techniques to make learning engaging. So, gamification has been there, even before the pandemic and even in a traditional classroom setup wherein our teachers use games to engage us, something like that. So, this is the first emerging technology that we have. The second one is the Artificial Intelligence.
So, I believe everyone is already aware of Artificial Intelligence, such as Gemini and ChatGPT. So, A while ago, someone have shown you how to use Gemini to streamline your work as a faculty. So, that is also one of the technologies emerging right now. So, I believe the fear towards AI is Sorry to subside, and now we are heading towards on how exactly do we use it. And some of the speakers today have shared to you how.
And last is the use of learning management system, specifically Canvas learning management system. So for those who have been using Canvas learning management system, I I think we could agree that it helped us a lot on how to to give assignments, to track the student progress of our students. Now, what will happen if we combine this all together? So first is for the gamification. So we can use gamification to make reading practice more engaging, motivating, encouraging, consistent skill development through challenges, rewards, and visible progress. So, you've seen a while ago how it could really encourage students to learn through those game elements like points, badges, leaderboards that is possible with Canvas.
Now, we have AI. We can use AI to brainstorm adaptive learning pathways. So you can ask ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever AI that you're using to convert your learning materials into different pathways. So, pathways could be addressing the different learning style of students. Pathways could be addressing the different preference of the students or maybe their current level in learning.
So in the context of reading, you can use ChatGPT to create reading materials that is aligned with the current level of your students because that is one thing that is hard to address. So, if you are I used to be an English teacher before I got into educational technology path. And one frustration is, in a class of maybe twenty, three of them is having a hard time to read. And, it's hard to focus on them because some of some of the students are getting bored. And with Pathways, we can let them read the same material.
So, for example, a piece of literary a literature piece. And then, artificial intelligence will create versions of it. If you're familiar with McGraw Hill, they have something like this, Literacy three thousand, wherein one article has ten versions based on the Lexile level. So you can do that with ChatGPT in just one prompt. So you can ask them to create different versions of that reading material.
Next is, you can use AI to generate vocabulary scaffolding because this is also another issue in reading. So, if how can you ask students to read even the simplest reading material if they don't know any vocabulary words at all? So, with ChatGPT, you can just simply ask them ask it to generate the vocabulary. So when I try this Prompt convert, like, for example, a parabol, because that's the easy easy story to share. A parabol, convert this parabol into four versions based on this Lexile levels. Lexile.
And then, also, get the vocabulary words that they need to learn first. So you can ask Chatchipiti to to do that already. Next is you can ask AI to construct personalized feedback. So, every time that your students answer the drills, the worksheets that has something to do with what they read, You can already ask AI to generate feedback so that they would be more aware of what they have to do next time. Next is convert.
Convert reading materials to various reading like science. Convert text to speech. So you can ask AI to convert text to speech so that you can embed it in your Canvas pages. So, as they read, they could be reading along with that AI. Then you can also use that as part of their learning pathways if they prefer an AI who speaks like a Gen Z or make the the accent is like a Gen Z or maybe a British accent or maybe other accent that you want.
So, you can do that with AI. Although, I'm not sure if that is possible with ChatGPT, but you can do that with AI. You can also ask AI to convert speech to text. So, there are tools right now One tool that I know is H5P five and then HYP could determine if the way they read it is correct. So, maybe you have the ten vocabulary words already, and then they will be having to You will require them to read, to be able to read them verbally or orally before they could move forward, H5P could do that.
And maybe some other tools can do that. As na mga park talaga siya as correct. So, yun. Taswang ppili in yan langgan is Filipino English. Parenabas accurate yung kanilang pronunciation.
Hiya. And next is we can use AI to convert text to image. Social media wherein people create images from AI. So, if we're going to contextualize it to help their reading comprehension of students, so we can use this to help them visualize what they are reading, to to support their vocabulary building. Or maybe on the other way around, you want to make sure if they really understand a reading material.
You can ask them to prompt AI to express what they have understood with what they read. Now, when it comes to Canvas, we can use outcomes to have a clear picture of their current reading comprehension level. So, outcomes is, I think, one of the least or underutilized tool of Canvas, but this could be a powerful tool if you're going to use it to the maximum level. So, outcomes is a feature of Canvas wherein you can tag each learning question, each rubric to a learning outcome that you want to measure. And when you use this, you will be able to see the current mastery level for each for each learning outcome.
So, for example, you want to know if they could if they could identify the theme already, if they could identify the characterization of the characters, so you can clearly identify. So, this is essential because it's hard to do this in simple classroom observations because some classroom observations could be scripted. This is also hard to do in just looking at the scores because the nine over ten or maybe nine over twenty of student one could be a Different Picture from the nine over twenty results of student two. And, to give us a clearer picture, we have outcomes. Next, we have mastery paths, which was shared a while ago.
So you can use mastery paths to automatically direct students to the correct reading materials that they need according to their level. And last is, we can use Canvas credentials to gamify our modules and assessment so that we could give them badges that they could look forward to as they try to use or to start to read using your modules. So with Canvas credentials, especially the premium version, You can assign badges for each assignment, for each quiz. So if they receive this score, they will get this badge. And badge could have points, and then it could be stacked together to be in the leaderboard.
Atom of no. You can also use new quizzes to provide engaging and interactive assessments because with new quizzes, we can use the stimuli stimuli tool wherein there would be reading material, and then there will be follow-up questions along with the reading material. So as they read, they are answering questions. So, you can do that with new quizzes. So, I would like to encourage everyone to maximize this emerging technologies to address the learning poverty crisis here in the Philippines.
This is a serious issue that we are facing right now, most especially in the basic education. But, eventually, the higher education will suffer once those students are in the higher education. So, I would like to share to everyone. Now, let's not be afraid of technology. So, when AI got popular initially, everyone is so scared.
When the AI first entered our classrooms with AI generated essays. It felt like a threat. Not just AI, but other technology. I remember when Google was just emerging when I was young, teachers have the same reaction. So, it felt like it might take away what makes us as teachers.
But maybe, AI was never meant to replace us, but to release us, to give us time to do the things that we need to do as teachers. So, maybe some of you, you are doing other things aside from teaching. You are preparing materials for a long time. You are checking. You are arranging events for your students.
Yung mga sinasalayanil lang events. So, there are so many things to do. But AI could be something that could help us. So, let us use the time saved as time reinvested. Spend it on what matters most.
So, every hour AI gives back in a in an hour, we can spend where it matters most, reading with a struggling child, sparkling curiosity in a classroom, reminding a student that they are seen and capable. These are the things that we should do every time that we save time because of this technology. Netflix or the senate hearing. So, let's use our time save for these things that we have. And next is, let's treat save time as secret time.
Let's be wise and brave enough to use this gift well. So, technology is a gift or it could become a gift if we will look at it closely. And, let us turn this save time for shaping lives, igniting minds, and raising a generation that not only reads, but leads. So, this is what we want for our student. A young generation that leads the nation, that could be the hope of our society because right now, it seems hopeless.
But the future is in our hands as our teachers. And I think having a good reading comprehension is a good start because through having reading comprehension, students can be critical with what they are seeing online, what they are reading online in the comment section that could be biased, that could be flooded with trolls. And their opinions could be influenced easily if they don't have enough reading comprehension. So, let us use save time as sacred time. So that we could make the future that we want possible.
Not just for us, but for our students. Because at the end of the day, AI or any form of technology is not hero of this story. The hero of this story are you teachers. We teachers are the hero of this story. So, right now, we are feeling hopeless or maybe some of you angry like me about what is happening in our country.
But there is hope. You can say to your sitmate, Peter is hope, and you are the hero. We are the hero. Technology to make this happen. Thank you so much.