Tag: Alexa

Colleges and universities around the world are creating new Amazon Alexa skills to enhance the student experience on campus. From quiz skills built by professors that help students study to multi-lingual skills that give students access to learning content in their native language, Alexa is helping universities create new and exciting learning environments. Read what five schools from around the world are doing with Alexa skills this school year.

Students have questions. Their schools have the answers. A multi-modal chatbot delivers the missing link, providing a way for students to ask questions and get access to institutions’ answers. Saint Louis University used the open source QnABot, which can simplify bot deployment and administration for non-technical user.

Enter the Amazon Alexa EdTech Skills Challenge to submit your great idea for how Amazon Alexa can help your education technology product better serve students, teachers, administrators, or parents. In collaboration with SXSW EDU, this contest is designed to find the best application of voice technology in education and is open to all US-based education technology companies.

In the current environment of digital transformation, there is a lot of talk on how best to educate students for new job profiles. Attempts to increase graduation numbers in software engineering programs are only part of the answer. All students need to improve their digital literacy and collaboration skills.

As part of our commitment to making science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and careers accessible to students, we host AWS Field Trips to engage young students with cloud technology. Three years ago, the AWS Field Trip program started at AWS re:Invent to inspire and engage middle school students to pursue STEM education and careers by exposing them to fun, hands-on engagements with technology. Since then, the program has scaled to Madrid, Spain, and Ottawa, Canada, reaching middle school students globally. This year, AWS Field Trips are expanding to several 2019 AWS Summits globally, reaching more students and providing a pathway for continued learning through AWS Educate.

Imagine this scenario: two people are on a date, and they each bring something else along – their phones. Society is beginning to tolerate, and even accept, the influence of digital technology into our worlds. But voice technology may have people looking away from their phones and talking to each other (and to Amazon Alexa).

Earlier this year, we announced Alexa Skill Blueprints, a way for anyone to create a variety of Alexa skills for personal use by just filling in the blanks. Now, we are adding the ability to publish skills created using Alexa Skill Blueprints to the Alexa Skills Store, so tens of millions of Alexa customers can discover, use, and review your skill. These new tools for content creators enable organizations to reach anyone with an Alexa-enabled device, simply by adding their content into an Alexa Skill Blueprint.

With mid-term elections upon us, the world’s spotlight is on our electoral system: How can people vote? Where can they vote? How can we secure the polls? Election officials, candidates, and voters are balancing scale, security, and usability to modernize elections.

Saint Louis University (SLU) will become the first university to bring virtual personal assistants into every student residence on its campus and to equip them with a private, SLU-specific skill through Alexa for Business. This fall, SLU plans to place more than 2,300 Amazon Echo Dots in residence hall rooms and student apartments.

School’s out for the summer for most students. And still, AWS Educate was top of mind for our readers. Learn about one of the first cloud-computing degrees offered at community colleges, Alexa’s new badge, and a new Machine Learning Pathway available for Educate members. Check out our top five posts from June.