"Teach me Tables" - an Alexa Skill

Inspiration

As I live in New Jersey but work in New York, I get very little time to teach my kids at home. On one Saturday morning, I tried to teach math tables to my 6 year old. It was difficult. After different trials and errors, I found a way to keep her engaged and entertaining. I told her that we were going to play a game. First, I would draw the first 5 items from two table in big bold letters on a blackboard and challenged her to remember as many as she can. Once she is ready, I would wipe those out, and quiz her the first half of the 2 times table. I am surprised to see her learning quickly. Gamification of teaching tables this way made engaged and entertaining.

So, from then on, every Saturday, we would play this game. She not only enjoys this mode of learning but started learning tables quickly. So, I thought of spreading this method to all other parents like me because it is very effective. I thought the best way to do this is to automate this process so that all other kids can use it in a fun way.

After exploring, I found Alexa Presentation Language (APL) with which we can create beautiful, immersive experiences by building an Alexa skill that runs on every device such as Echo, Echo Show, Fire TV, etc.

My daughter loves this Alexa skill I have built, and she loves to play it over and over again on our Smart TV (using Amazon Fire stick) and she now knows tables all the way up to 8th table perfectly and she is just in the First Grade :)

What it does

"Teach me Tables" is an Alexa Skill that helps kids learn and memorize math tables in an interactive, visually appealing and fun way.

It starts out by asking which table kids like to learn. It then displays and recites the first five items from that table. It will ask the user to memorize them and once they are ready, it tests their memory with a short quiz. It congratulates kids using funny voices when they get it right, and when they get it wrong, it makes funny sounds and tells them the correct answer.

For every correct answer, it assigns 10 points and the score is tracked throughout the session to keep kids engaged. Once the first half of the table is completed, it then goes on to teach the rest of the table using similar techniques.

This skill is developed based on a real life, proven teaching techniques used to teach kids master their math times tables.

How I built it

The skill is built using Node.js, Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), Alexa Presentation Language (APL), Visual Studio Code, Lambda, Git and AWS.

APL is very fun to play with. The authoring tool is really helpful. I used to mock up the screen and show it to my daughter to get her feedback. She always provides honest feedback. The decoupling of the user interface with APL documents and data binding is really cool.

I am amazed at how cool and fast the ASK CLI is when trying to make updates and publish it to lambda. It just takes few seconds to deploy my updated code to lambda using ASK/AWS CLI.

Challenges I ran into

Initially, it was little bit challenge to understand how the Alexa Presentation Language works and how I can use it. But once I figured out and understood, it was a pleasant experience.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am really proud that my daughter is able to play and learn math tables quickly, even when I am busy or don't have much time to spend with her during week days because of my hectic work schedule.

I am glad that I made this skill available to other kids/parents through Alexa.

What I learned

Teaching Kids can be fun. I realized how the technology can help in creating beautiful voice and visual experiences for kids so that they enjoy learning in a new and fun way.

I also learned a lot about Alexa Skills Kit, Alexa Presentation Language, Node.js, etc.