Carousel

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  Carousel in Alexa Skill kit

Inspiration

We all need to continuously grow in all aspects of life and formation, if there are complementary ways to assist in this journey since we are at early age stronger generations will make our world.

What it does

Carousel shares brief facts or themes for reflection on these 10 categories: 1) English language: it can be on grammar, linguistics, vocabulary, writing or other related topic. 2) Food: includes any subject related to food, for example a brief/practical recipe, a tip, a good practice for cooking and/or baking, healthy eating, or facts about food. 3) Beauty; it can be any related topic with the vision of encouraging positive thoughts. 4) Story: these are brief narratives including factual history, or imaginative events. 5) Play: these can include strategies, game rules, processes and/or facts to encourage strategic thinking, and start building knowledge on applied logic, math, game design, and associated topics . 6) History: these include facts, history briefs (from primarily United States).
7) Geography: facts, briefs related to geography (from primarily United States). 8) Life facts: these can be any topic associated with nature, life and environment; health sciences, and biology. 9) Thought: content inviting reflection. 10) Numbers: content may share practical use/applications of numbers in math, geometry, financial, or in arithmetic calculations. It also provides a brief explanation of the process to arrive to the results.

The user selects the topics they want to listen after Alexa mentions the topics available for selection .

How I built it

The skill was built using Alexa Skill kit for developers, the interaction Beta Builder and the Lambda function. I used Atom editor to write the Lambda Node JS skill. I used the Test Simulator available in the Skill Kit for Developers (the other on line simulator did not want to launch).

Challenges I ran into

Understanding the logic, steps, and the process (what is required in each phase of the skill, the terminology, the work flows involved creating a skill, troubleshooting issues, navigation to AMS documentation and references) to create the skill (and trying to find answers or partial insights to the questions I ran into, visiting multiple sources to address the issues faced or errors during the development of the skill took me some time). With perseverance and some practice identifying the necessary steps (some do not come up in the training materials I could find), I finally could see some light. I am also new to NodeJS, Java and Alexa so I had to do some work on this as well.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I found the skill worked in Alexa and it is encouraging, although I have a lot more to improve and to learn on Alexa's capabilities to build more robust or custom skills. Thanks Amazon for setting up these capabilities!

What I learned

I learned how the front end and the back end development work and align. I also learned the value of using Amazon Skill kit to build voice interaction solutions as it provides a lot of built in infrastructure to make it easier for the developer. For instance, once I found how to properly use Beta interaction model I found it very valuable, it also has a built-in of intents library that is a huge plus. I have been learning and appreciating the challenges of building such libraries to advance AI for voice recognition (Google, researchers and other entities are trying to address such challenges). It is a matter of thinking through the skill we want to share, carefully design it and aim to build it as good as we can. In addition we have to read, practice with Alexa skill kits, and hold commitment to advance our Node JS development skills.

What's next for Carousel

Updating with new content. I am excited about the possibility of complementing kids' development and growth with this small contribution. I believe that presenting content on practical and accessible way (spoken with written alternative) can enhance the taste for learning and grow in many kids.

Built With

• node-js-usign-ams-lambda