Bangla Animal Word

Kids learn fast and they would love to learn animals name in new language when hear their sound and see the image.

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Inspiration

I have a 3 years old kid and he is very keen of learning animal names with sounds and pictures. In most of the electronic learning aids kids can learn English name of the animals and I always have to translate the same in Bengali to him so that he can learn Bengali. When Amazon Echo came to India, the first thing I planned to create a skill which can help kids to learn Bengali words in interesting way. In India interactive voice assistance is still not that much famous and specifically for kids it is really not an interesting thing. This is my little try to make Alexa voice assistance more entertaining to Indian Bengali Kids.

What it does

In a simple word, this skill can help you to learn bengali animal names. You can just ask for the meaning of common animal names in English and it would tell you the Bengali name. To make it more interesting for kids, it would also tell you the sounds of the animal along with an image in the Alexa App.

How I built it

From technical perspective I built it using node.js and Alexa SDK for node.js. But behind the scene there are many more. I needed to shortlist the common animal names for 1st phase, then gather the sound and images for them. And the challenging part was to record the Bengali name for those animals. My wife helped me in that front. She created numbers of recordings for the Bengali words to finally select the best one.

Challenges I ran into

The major challenge I faced to find out the animal sounds for all animals so that it would be enjoyable for kids.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I could finish the skill by finding time amidst of thousands of hindrances. I really feel proud when my 3 years old kid is asking me start the app again and again to hear the words and sounds and when he himself learnt all the bengali words from this skill.

What I learned

A lot, first and foremost, knowledge about how to build engaging kids skill. Apart from that, enhanced my node.js skill, and last but not the least, learnt a few animal sounds too which I wasn't aware of.

What's next for Bangla Word

For this skill sky is the limit. I have plan to add many new animals soon in the repository. Also based on the response I am planning to create different flavors of Bangla Word skills to teach Bengali words to kids, the next in line is Birds.

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