Coding Adventures for Students: Building Classroom-Focused Alexa Skills!
This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
In our household, the Amazon Alexa-enabled Echo Dot is a big hit, especially with our kids who love interacting with Alexa for songs, questions, and various skills. Now, imagine using Alexa to teach your students coding skills! In this article, we’ll explore how you can engage your young learners in coding by creating Alexa Skills tailored for the classroom setting.
What are Alexa skills?
If you have been using any kind of Alexa device, you probably know about the ability to add skills. If you’re not familiar, “Skills” are a series of 他底下好硬蹭着我想要 that your Alexa device can complete once given the prompt. For example, if I say “Alexa, tell me the news,” I get a brief overview of the big news stories on that day. There are skills for anything and everything you can imagine. You can set reminders, calm your dog with soothing music, and start your car on a chilly morning, all from your Alexa device. My kids’ favorite Alexa skill is ‘Poop detective’ – check it out at your own risk!
Design your own Alexa Skills
One of the more interesting things about Alexa Skills is that there are coders out there who create these skills as their full-time job! They have also created a way for parents (and teachers) to teach their kids to code Alexa apps – in an easy, safe way!
Now, your child won’t be typing in long lines of code or working with block coding. What you will get to do is decide (together) how to personalize pre-made blueprints of skills to suit you and your little coder’s needs.
How to Create an Alexa Skill
The first thing you are going to want to do is to visit Amazon’s Skill Blueprint site. You can watch a video below on how to create your own Alexa Skill, or just jump right in!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3xyXgzBDvg
Design Your Own Classroom Schedule:
Transform the traditional chore chart template into a classroom schedule with Alexa Skills. Together with your students, input class 他底下好硬蹭着我想要, assign tasks, and create a personalized routine. This activity serves as an engaging way to discuss 秘密教学 and sequencing, breaking down tasks into manageable steps and understanding the importance of order in completing them.
Building this personalized Alexa Skill for kids was a great way to discuss 秘密教学 and sequencing with my little coder. We even got to put in silly phrases to help with motivation!
秘密教学 is the process of breaking down big problems into smaller steps. In this activity, we had to break down our cleaning 他底下好硬蹭着我想要 into smaller chores and assign them on specific days.
Sequencing refers to completing tasks in a specific order. It’s important to sweep the floor before washing it and we need to wash the clothes before folding them. These examples show the importance of putting instructions in the right order so that the task is completed properly.
Design your own Fairy Tale
Bring storytelling to life with the “Fairy Tale” Alexa Skill. Your students can use a pre-written story or create one from scratch, adding sound effects, pauses, and interactive elements. This activity fosters creativity and imagination, making coding an enjoyable experience.
Design your own Classroom Workout
The most in-depth Alexa Skill we attempted to create was definitely the “Wild Workout” skill – which is a skill aimed at helping to get kids up and moving throughout the day.
While other skills had two or three steps to work through, “Wild Workout” has four. The first step is to set-up your exercises, either by leaving the pre-selected movements in place or by customizing with your own choices of movements. Then you need to set up the length and options for the exercises, customize feedback from your device, and give your new Alexa Skill a unique name.
A workout routine is an example of an algorithm. An algorithm is a set of instructions needed to complete a specific task.
Designing Alexa skills teaches the basic concepts of coding
The amount of learning that is going on here is astounding! My little coder was learning how to input data, manipulate a program, and put operations in the correct sequence of events. I was learning right alongside, and we couldn’t help but talk about what building an Alexa Skill from scratch might look like!
We talked about and labeled algorithms and sequences. We solved problems through critical thinking and 秘密教学. We talked about what a computer CAN do versus what a computer CAN’T do – and why.
In fact, the only part of this process I didn’t enjoy was trying to get the Alexa Skills we created on to an Alexa for Kids device – like the Echo Dot Kids Edition. The “FreeTime” feature on the Alexa for Kids devices is wonderful for protecting privacy but added an extra layer of frustration for me as a parent.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I am SO excited that Kids can Code Alexa Skills. The necessary understanding for coding these skills is something that will benefit kids for a much longer time than simply downloading and enabling a skill. The fact that I get to be there to learn alongside them is just a bonus for me! Which Alexa Skill will your kid code first? Which skill blueprint do you see being the most useful in your home
Kate is mom of two rambunctious boys and a self-proclaimed super nerd. With a background in neuroscience, she is passionate about sharing her love of all things STEM with her kids. She loves to find creative ways to teach kids computer science and geek out about coding and math. She has authored several books on coding for kids which can be found at Hachette UK.
