Amazon Alexa - Learning Ideas

[jmay1]

Just saw the presentation on Alexa at #instcon17, I am thrilled. Can't wait to share Circlesofinnovation.org However, while I am excited about the ability to learn about my grade and what assignments are due, what I would really like to see is a tool that helps my students learn. How can we add retrieval practice activities, shared videos, shared takeaways, shared announcements, shared previews of what they will need to know in class the next day. 

Here are some examples

1. Alexa what were the key take aways from class today? (Teacher could summarize key take aways in an area of canvas and then Alexa could respond with an abbreviation of the key take aways)
2. Alexa quiz me on what we learned in class today! (Alexa could then ask questions related to content in the course). 
3. Alexa what should I be thinking about to prepare for class tomorrow! (This could be an amazing tool for helping students get ready and think about things coming up in class) 
4. Alexa what announcements do I have?
5. Alexa play any videos my teacher shared with us on the TV

I think there is also a lot of potential for Alexa virtual teaching assistance in the classroom, but I will save those ideas for another post. 

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[sburnett1]

I love these ideas!

Just so people know your fourth idea: 

Alexa what announcements do I have?

Is actually already supported in the Alexa skill! Jared demoed it on stage at the reveal.  Is there more with this that you would like to see?

[ericwerth]

Our daughter checks her math homework with Alexa.  Maybe there is a way to have a Khan-Alexa like mix where students can work on homework and get immediate feedback on how they did . . . perhaps similar to your thought on quizzing.  I would also love to see this a bit more gamified, like a Kahootz quiz.

Of course, we also had to talk with our daughter about using Alexa to find homework answers before trying the problems!

[jmay1]

Yep, had to have that same conversation with my 10 year old daughter whom we caught asking Alexa the answers to her HW. Begs the question though... If this generation will always have the ai with them, how should they be learning? Perhaps we shouldn't be giving them problems that can be easily answered by Alexa. I am continuing to test Alexa's skills if you are interested Circles of Innovation » Testing Alexa’s Skills  

[ericwerth]

Good point about what learning should be in the age of tools like Alexa  @jmay1 .  In some ways I believe that it will require we reconsider the role of knowledge acquisition itself.  If we think of this in light of something like Bloom's Taxonomy, is it acceptable to allow students to look up information that is easily accessible and thus essential bypass the "knowledge" or "remembering" levels?  Can we truly move to higher levels of thinking if we depend on some form of technology to remember information for us?  Then again, maybe this question is really the same as "should we allow students to use calculators in math class?"!

I will definitely check out Circles of Innovation.

[kona]

If students can quickly and easily get an answer to a simple knowledge based question then in my mind we need to be focusing on the understanding and applying and less on the memorizing. 

[kmeeusen]

Beyond a certain level of workable knowledge base, I agree  @kona ‌!

Personally, I no longer try to remember what can be easily looked up, except essential working knowledge. You know, things like remembering Alexa's name so she can look up everything else.

At my age, for every new thing I learn, some older memory must go, and I am already up to 1987 and can't afford to get more recent than that or I will forget when I got married and my wife will kill me.

[jared_flaherty]

I'm finding that Alexa reads only the SUBJECT line of a Canvas Announcement.   In my experiences so far it does not read the actual body of the Canvas Announcement.

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

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