Many people already know what Alexa is for, a virtual assistant that, based on voice commands and social networks,wifiorbluetooth, communicates with other devices, allowing us to ask it to turn on the light, activate an alarm clock, or ask it to play a song. However, its functionalities go beyond that: Alexa can assist in the learning process, even during leisure moments, whether for convenience or entertainment.
How does Alexa work?
Alexa's activity execution process is based onmachine learning(machine learning), that is, it "learns" according to the commands it receives. Additionally, it creates adaptations and functionalities according to users' personal needs, such as telling jokes and even making the grocery list.
For this, the tool has an online database that performs its searches. Like any machine that can be trained, over time it becomes increasingly more efficient in its responses, according to the user's commands.
“In addition to being an excellent personal assistant, Alexa brings a series of specific benefits to the teaching-learning process for both children and adults,” explains Victor Haony Ribeiro de Oliveira, pedagogical advisor at Mind Makers.
Benefits of Alexa for teaching and learning
The use of this tool helps make the interaction process with technology more organic in daily life, which can be useful even for those who tend to fear technological tools. After all, when interacting with Alexa, the process becomes familiar to those who do it, incorporating it into their daily activities.
In addition, it has many educational and fun resources, such as games, interactive stories and challenges that can help you learn different concepts in a fun way.
“Alexa can also help develop cognitive skills, such as problem-solving, logical reasoning and vocabulary expansion, especially in environments where the assistant is used to assist with educational tasks,” explains Haony.
Thinking about these facilities and benefits, the specialist selected5 Alexa activations that combine practicality and funto create amazing moments during holidays, breaks, and weekends. Check it out!
1. Weather and traffic information- very useful for preparing for car trips or trips to the beach.
2. Playing music– nothing like reproducing thatplaylistthat energizes any Sunday barbecue using only a voice command. The same goes for that unmissable podcast, which is usually listened to during moments of rest on the sofa at home.
3. Reading books- Reading a book is, for many people, a common habit. How about gathering friends in the living room and asking Alexa to read a suspense book? Creating a setting for this activity can make it even more immersive, such as choosing dimmer lights and preparing that popcorn.
4. Question and answer games– By enabling the optionDaily QuizAlexa asks three questions of different levels (easy, medium, and hard), and you can only access the next question after answering the previous one correctly. Another similar option is theMillion Dollar Showa quiz game based on Silvio Santos's show, featuring general knowledge questions worth points.
5. Guessing game –Another fun activity to do with family and friends using Alexa is to enable the skillAkinatorHere, the virtual assistant will serve as a "genie in a lamp" that will try to discover which character, fictional or real, you imagined, based on a sequence of questions.
Mind Makers –Born in Belo Horizonte, Mind Makers is an educational solution from the Somos Educação group that aims to improve the quality of education through innovative subjects, created using an exclusive methodology. Combining techniques of hybrid teaching, active learning, socio-emotional, and socio-interactionist approaches, it is a pioneer in Computational Thinking and Creative Entrepreneurship in Brazil, curricular subjects that aim to encourage its over 95,000 students to get hands-on and bring their ideas to life, taking the lead in their learning process. Currently, Mind Makers is the only Brazilian company to have its programming environments approved for the globally promoted campaign Hour of Code by the NGO Code.org.
