Voice User Interface in School?
Educational Uses for VUI
What is Voice User Interface?
Why VUI in Education?
A VUI unit is capable of "learning" many educational skills that can be helpful and relevant in the classroom. Alexa and Google Home both arrive with a pre-loaded set of skills and you can easily add more. This is where specific educational content comes in. For Amazon Alexa, navigate to the Skills Store. There, you will find many educational skills that were not pre-loaded. Cities, Libraries and schools are even starting to add their own “skills.” For example, libraries and schools are publishing menus, bus information, school news, etc…
A Few Educational Uses for Alexa
- Support Literacy-Students can ask Alexa the definition, synonym, or antonym of a word. This saves time thumbing through a book or logging onto the computer. Students can read aloud with the VUI unit, answer questions, and ask questions. There is even a skill where story prompts are read. You can buy an Audible account (free 30-day trial; $14.95/month after that) and have Alexa read an audiobook to the class. Or have her read Wikipedia articles to students.
- Support Social Studies- students can skip an internet search by asking Alexa simple geography and civics questions.
- Supporting Math-Math students can use Alexa to check their work when they’ve finished an assignment, ask for challenging questions about all types of math, and practice skills.
- Supporting Science-Students can convert units of measurements, practices skills based games, practice vocabulary words.
Reminders-Teachers can set a reminder for when to switch subjects for classes and Alexa will say, "time to switch classes."
Timers-Teachers can use for centers. labs and other tasks.
Dice, cards, coins, and other probability tools-Alexa will flip a coin, pick a card, roll a dice, or pick a random number between 1 and whatever top number you want. This saves time that can be spent on instruction.
Stress relief-Students can listen to music or stories.
Speaking-This device can also be a great way for kids to practice speaking as they must enunciate pretty well in order to be understood.
Questioning skills-Students can practice their questioning skills by thinking of the question they want to ask before asking it.