Learn the Word

• 

  Launch Happy Learning

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  Animals

• 

  Cities

• 

  Colors

Inspiration

Echo is something very new in the market with no other competitors in the market yet, with the Alexa Kids skill challenge it was initially very hard to choose what to build since I was at a very inception of my learning with Echo/Alexa. I started thinking as what the children expect out of their friend, teacher or parents. Its basically the urge to ask and learn something and if it could be with fun will be great, isn't it?

What it does

Happy Learning is focused for the kids under the age of 6-7(primary school goers) where they are in their early stage of schooling, learning new the words and syllable. You can ask Happy Learning to name some Animals, Colors or Cities and it will speak them out as well as write out the words on the companion app/other device for the kid to get the spelling of the particular word as well.

How I built it

It took me to get started with the Node.js as the default supported language for building the custom logic on Lambda function which provide the instant response being the part of AWS stack was the best thing to get started with.

Challenges I ran into

Since I was pretty new to Node.js and also while building Alexa Skill, so ran into some of the areas/issues where I had to get the necessary help from the experts and the evangelist but somehow all of them were cleared till the certification.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Well I am most proud of the Complete skill which will enable a learning with fun interaction for the kids where with the minimum parents involvement the child can get learning with the skill in quick time.

What I learned

There were various things I have learned, right from understanding the Alexa Interface to writing aspect oriented code for kids in Node.js for the Lambda execution. Use of Custom Slots and Intents were fairly new topic of consideration which were fun part while building the Skill.

What's next for Learn the Word

Well, its been the initial draft where the Skill is focused on the simple interface of pronouncing/spelling out the words that the individual request for, however in the next version I would be very much eager to come up with two add-ons, i.e first to enrich the content(since currently its focused on Cities, Animals and Colors) and secondly the mutual interaction or contextual conversation will be enabled so as the Child interaction could be more intuitive and fun.

Built With

• alexa-sdk
• node.js