A couple of months ago, I went to a hackathon where we built a demo skill – STEM Party. I liked the concept a lot, and so I decided to turn the prototype STEM Party into a full-fledged, working skill. I’m happy to announce that STEM Party is officially live! This is the fourth skill I have published to the Alexa Skill Store after Kids Advice, Meal Buddy, and Wheel of Fun. I also want to give a shoutout to my Hackathon team, Swapnil, Carleen, and Dana.

You can enable and try STEM Party by going to this link.

Why STEM Party? Few would deny the educational importance of STEM. I believe Alexa can be a good friend and mentor to all kids and it can make a positive difference in their lives. I hope that STEM Party can excite kids about learning.

This is my first multi-modal skill. I used the latest Alexa Presentation Language (APL) to create a screen experience which users can enjoy.

STEM Party asks the user for which subject and difficulty level they would like and then starts giving the user questions to answer. Users can play for as long as they would like.

To make learning more interesting, I added points to the game, points being the number of questions the user answers correctly. It also uses the DynamoDB Persistence Adapter to save your total score and highest streak across sessions. For example, if a user plays STEM Party three times, and gets the scores 2, 3, and 5, their total score would be 10. Their highest streak is the most questions they have ever answered correctly in a row. This blog post by Justin Jeffress was very helpful. Here is the skill’s flow.

User: “Alexa, open STEM Party.”
Alexa: “Welcome to STEM Party! Are you ready to start?
User: “Yes.”
Alexa: “Would you like to play math or science?”
User: “Math.”
Alexa: “Awesome! I love math! Would you like to play easy, medium, or hard?”
User: “Easy!”
Alexa: “Great! Here is your first question: What is 7 + 7?”
User: “14.”
Alexa: “Correct answer! Here is your next question: Joe has 2 beans. Sam has 8. How many do they have altogether?”
User: “11.”
Alexa: “Wrong answer. The correct answer was 10. Here is your next question: What is 2 x 4?”
User: “Stop.”
Alexa: “You scored 1 point. Good job! Hope to see you again soon!”