WonderLens

**ElleHacks is is Canada's largest hackathon for women and gender-diverse students. This project was completed within 24 hours, so it is not fully functional**

Team: Jessica Corkal, Jasmin Slootweg, Subin Hwang, Sydney Simota

For our ElleHacks2025 Project, we wanted to focus on the issue of high illiteracy rates in children. Literacy is more than just reading and writing. It is the foundation of critical thinking skills in child development. It empowers children with understanding, empathy, and problem-solving, shaping their future success.

According to the Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation, more than one million children in Canada are estimated to have below grade-level reading skills.

27% of kids start Grade 1 without some of the early developmental skills they need to be able to read.

According to the PISA (Program for International Student Development), reading scores of Canadian 15 year olds have dropped by 13 points, meaning Canada’s reading scores dropped by an equivalent of 7.8 months of lost learning.

To address the issue, we are focusing on children ages 5 to 7, a crucial period in their reading development. Literacy follows a developmental cascade, meaning that early reading skills set the stage of lifelong learning. By supporting children at the beginning of their reading journey, we can help them build fundamental skills needed for language comprehension and expression, paving the way for greater success in the future.

We made a mobile app called WonderLens to make reading practice more fun and accessible. The app will have two modes. In reading mode, children will be able to read an ebook as their speech and pronunciation is corrected by an AI partner. Play mode, or AR Mode, builds on to this and allows children to hover the camera of their device over a physical book and watch as the pages come to life with 3D visuals.