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This Teacher’s Day, here’s a look at how teachers across the country are using voice technology in innovative ways to make learning accessible and fun in remote India.
This article is sponsored by Amazon.
It’s 8 am and the bell has just rung at the Ramkrishna Parmance Marg Municipal Marathi School in Mumbai. You’d expect students to slowly settle in to get their books out, perhaps avoiding laziness at the last minute.
But anyone who passes Pooja Sankey’s eighth grade school will be in for a surprise. A room full of students sitting upright and eager to start the day, they give off a wave of excitement.
the reason? The Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker with voice assistant is at the front of the class.
It all started in 2018, when the teacher thought, “Why not make learning a little creative?” She placed the Echo in a mannequin she ordered online, and built a friendly new robot that kids soon came to love.
Soon, Guru Pooja’s classes become successful. The students were in awe of the robot, laughed when he answered their questions and stood amazed at how one “person” could know so many subjects.
Artificial intelligence and the evolution of the classroom
Today, the concept that Teacher Pooja follows in her classes is the same, albeit without the mannequin.
“While I still do modeling during a few classes, I usually teach with Echo Dot speakers and Alexa,” she says, adding that during lockdown she has been taking virtual classes with Alexa by her side so kids’ questions can be easily answered.
Each day starts with Alexa-suggested meditations. Then, the students begin to formulate their questions to be answered by the AI in English.
But it is not only the students of Ramkrishna Parmhans Marg who have found a new and exciting way to learn. Across India, traditional blackboards and chalks are slowly being complemented by various forms of artificial intelligence with improved features, innovative technologies, and an almost human aspect.
Amazon’s Alexa is on its way to not only making learning more fun, but also revolutionizing the education sector. Here are five ways:
- Arouse children’s curiosity:
Moving from Mumbai to Gorakhpur in northern India, Kalindi, a head instructor at Sparsh Rashtriya Kanya Inter College, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, goes the extra mile for her students. She wants to ensure blind students, especially girls, get a quality education and equal opportunity.
She says that every time Alexa goes out, kids can’t control their excitement.
“They love Alexa,” she says, adding that what they love most about AI is that no matter what the question is, they always get an answer. “Kids are always curious about anything and everything, and Alexa satiates their hunger for knowledge as they interact.”
Alexa is also a source of fun for kids. Rahat Onessa, Principal at GUHPS Venkateshapura, a government Urdu language school in Bengaluru, says she encourages children to use Alexa in class, especially for general knowledge and stories.
“My teachers tell me that kids are more excited about learning to spell words from Alexa and then using them in sentences,” she says, recalling an incident where she witnessed a class of students excited about learning topics about forming new words and learning synonyms for simple words and then using them in new sentences.
2. Know all subjects:
“We have to teach students braille and abacus because these things are going to help them in the real world. But AI is helping children with visual impairments get information while also imagining what they just learned with braille,” says Rakesh Kumar Soni, a visually impaired teacher who has been awarded Bachelor’s degree in Visual Impairment.
He is currently visiting multiple schools across the Basti district of Uttar Pradesh and teaching children the basics of mathematics.
He’s not the only one who thinks Alexa was a boost for visually impaired kids.
Kalende also agrees. “For visually impaired children, language is their only means of communication. They can’t learn by observing. Hence, when AI overcomes this barrier by simplifying topics to a level children can understand, it’s amazing.”
What’s amazing, says another teacher, Amit Awasthi from Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, is that kids don’t hesitate before asking Alexa questions. “They feel free to raise suspicion no matter what the topic is about,” he says.
3. Mentor children who do not have resources
As they say, learning doesn’t stop outside the four walls of the classroom. It extends to the child’s life outside, and even at home.
Rakesh says, “Many of the children we study on a daily basis are those whose parents are uneducated. They come from backgrounds where they cannot ask questions at home, because their parents may not have the answers.”
In such cases, he adds, Alexa is the only means of accessing the technology, taking on the role of mentor, and giving these children the opportunity to learn and be understood, regardless of their background.
As Amit adds, Alexa helps take some of the burden off the teacher. He says, “Sometimes, there are topics we don’t know much about or we may not have the amount of information a child might need. In those cases, it’s great to have an AI assistant that can answer all their questions correctly.”
4. Learning opportunities for each age group
Principal Rahat fondly recounts an incident in which a third grader asked Alexa to imitate the sounds of different animals. “The children were thrilled to hear a device that was able to reproduce all the sounds perfectly.”
She adds: “I remember a teacher came to me one day, all excited. I asked Alexa to tell a story in class and then she asked the children to write down the new words they had heard. One child wrote 50 new words!”
This, she says, startled her and the teacher.
“Even such a task as writing English words, which would earlier have been accompanied by groans and sighs, is now carried out with great enthusiasm.”
5. It meets different learning styles
Teacher Pooja says she loves it with Alexa; No child feels left out. “Often as educators, we cannot give every child the personal attention they need. While teaching math, for example, some children may watch us solve a problem on the board and understand it immediately. Some may be confident trying it themselves. But some may require guidance. and continued approval of their work. Alexa bridges that gap.”
Thus, students can check their answers with Alexa no matter what step of the mathematical equation they are on.
“This not only makes the process easier for us, but also ensures that each child learns at their own pace,” says Pooja.
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