Kids Congress

Help kids to understand government

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Inspiration

We were inspired to build this skill based on our observation that some kids in the elementary school level are really interested to know more about how the government works. Also thanks to oursociety.org for inspiring us to build this skill.

What it does

In this first version the skill is very basic, it provides the list of representatives for a given zip code. Users can just provide the zip code by speaking the numbers one by one.

How I built it

It’s built with the standard node.js alexa module. API calls for the list of representatives is made available from whoismyrepresentative.com.

Challenges I ran into

We tried using the city name to identify the location but found it can be challenging for Alexa to understand names. For that reason we changed the logic to accept zip codes which are digits and hence easy to understand.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

It’s great to build something that fulfills a functionality even if it’s very basic.

What I learned

Voice application design has many differences compared with web/mobile. Until you actually play around and build something those differences are not clear.

What's next for Kids Congress

We are going to incorporate facts about the government like what does a congressman do along with trivia quizz to improve this skill.

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