Esercizi sulle tabelline

An alexa skill allowing children to practice with times table

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Inspiration

We developed an app for iOS and Android with similar functionalities. The idea came while helping our child practicing with times table and seemed very natural to have an app which can ask various times table, takes care of the errors made and is really able to help children to learn times table in the oldest but most effective way: asking and answering. So it seemed very natural to use the ability of Alexa to reproduce the same functionalities.

What it does

The skill is directed to the Italian market and is able to allow children to study and the verify their knoledge. You can choose between three areas:

  • Practicing on a specific time table in order. Asking for example "esercizi sulla tabellina del 5" Alexa will start asking 5 times 1, 5 times 2 and so on.
  • Practicing on a specific time table in a random order. Asking for example "esercizi casuali sulla tabellina del 5" Alexa could start with 5 times 7 then 5 times 2 and so on.
  • Testing knowledge on all times table from 1 to a given one (or to 10). Asking for example "verifica fino alla tabellina del 7" Alexa could ask 6 times 4 then 7 times 4, and so on.

A nice sound shows the right answer and a negative little sound followed by the right answer shows a mistake. At the end of a test session of 20 questions the kid gtes the number of right answers and various positive sounds to be gratified.

It's available on the Italian Store: Provate la nostra nuova Skill per Alexa Esercizi sulle tabelline.

https://www.amazon.it/dp/B07MVWVBRM/ref=sr_1_1?s=alexa-skills&ie=UTF8&qid=1547711479&sr=1-1&keywords=esercizi+sulle+tabelline

How I built it

The skill is built with javascript on node.js running on an AWS lambda instance.

Challenges I ran into

We had the experience made during the development of the app for mobile device so it hasn't been a big challenge to convert the main part to javascript. We had some problems with the APL language but we think that event if still in beta it is very nice of what you can get with it.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Is is a plesure to see how a peace of technology like for example Alexa on Amazon Echo can be very useful for a kid to learn in new and easy way.

What I learned

We already developed anothe skill for Alexa and we now added the knoledge of APL in order to manage the graphical part on supported devices.

What's next for Esercizi sulle tabelline

If the skil has a good succes we think to develop the full algorithm we have on the mobile app able to take in account of the progress of kids in order to request more the times table where the kid has major problems.

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