Math Challenge

An Alexa skill that challenges kids with math problems

Comment

Inspiration

Mathematics finds application in many fields of human endeavor such as medicine, engineering and finance. Kids more often than not, are not interested in it. The inspiration for this skill is to motivate kids to learn math.

While there are many skills out there for doing this, the skill ‘Math Challenge’ is different in the following ways. Firstly, it makes learning fun with clever use of ‘Speech-cons’. Secondly, it uses a reward system (Beginner, Bronze, Silver and Gold) to motivate learners. In addition to these, it exhibits patience and tolerance required, when it comes to educating kids. Finally, it involves record keeping, which is essential for monitoring progress. Given that most existing Alexa math skills lack one or more of these features, I decided to make one.

What it does

The ‘Math Challenge’ skill is an adaptive math assessment platform specially designed for kids. It ‘challenges’ users with problems of varying degree of difficulties, which range from addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, highest common factor (H.C.F.) and least common multiple (L.C.M.). The math challenge adapts to users' level; it makes the challenge harder if they are doing well and easier otherwise. It both educates and entertains, using rich varieties of capabilities available in Alexa kit API.

The use of ‘Speechcons’ makes it fun. A reward system of (Beginner, Bronze, Silver and Gold) motivates kids and the use of a unique ‘Student ID’ persists performances of users for record keeping.

How I built it

I used Alexa Skill API to build the skill in Python. The figure above shows a high level schematic diagram of interaction of a user with the skill. A user invokes the skill with ‘math challenge’ and Alexa responds with a welcome message and an instruction. The skill asks and confirms the student ID. A student ID is a unique ID automatically generated by the skill for each unique user. This ID is stored in a DynamoDB table, alongside the user state. After this phase, the user can proceed to the challenge section. The skill gives out math challenges, processes answers and reports results back to the user.

Challenges I ran into

Getting Alexa to recognize correctly, bugs in the the interaction model, finding a way to store user's session etc.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I can help create the future of voice education, especially for kids. The template developed could be extended to other areas of education for kids and adults.

What I learned

I learnt a lot: VUI best practices, programming, debugging etc.

What's next for Math Challenge

Localize into in different languages, include more math areas such as algebra, equations, etc.

Share this project:

Updates