Sapna Maria Gomez

Social Stories (Creating a Story) is a fun, interactive voice app created for kids by SayKid. Almost recently, SayKid and VOGO Voice nabbed the judge’s choice and people’s choice award respectively in the Alexa EdTech Skills Challenge launched by AWS. Dedicated to transforming education through voice technology, SayKid attempts through the making of this voice app to spark creative thinking and encourage a safe, natural, and engaging experience for kids. With the mission to reduce the impact of screens on young brains, SayKid’s Social Stories voice app rises to the occasion of nourishing creativity tagged by the desire to keep kids off screens.

Travel Quest is an adventure-oriented educational game curated by Universatile to help students explore countries in a fun and engaging manner. The voice skill attempts a dual purpose to entertain and educate kids by putting forth the opportunity to learn about the cuisine, geography, landmarks, leaders, events, festivals native to different countries such as Japan, Canada, France, Brazil, Egypt and Australia.

True or False is a fun, icebreaker game created for trivia pros by labworks.io ltd. The standout feature of this voice skill is that it allows up to 20 players to partake in the game at a time.

Brainy Bee developed by Voice Whiz is an interactive quiz game for inquisitive kids in different planes of the learning platform. Often most voice skills are geared for adults or people across all age groups, but Brainy Bee has been designed with a purposeful intent to make learning a more enjoyable process for students as well as motivate them as they step up their learning curve.

Worthington Libraries is an interactive skill created for the library system by Pellucent Technologies LLC. as an initiative to connect with its members and enhance civic engagement. Using alternative voice assistive technology, Worthington Libraries was designed, developed, and debuted as an attempt to promote equal access to information across its community members. This voice skill is an extension of the library’s exemplary services to showcase how a customized voice skill can benefit members and keep them updated on upcoming events.

Rosetta Stone developed by Rosetta Stone Ltd. is an interactive skill that delivers language training in multiple languages to its users. This voice skill is different from the usual version of language learning programs. The Rosetta Stone attempts to help users who are traveling to a new country yet are not well versed with the language native to that country. The voice skill supports the learning of languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Japanese, and Russian.

The Boston Info voice app developed by the City of Boston is an initiative to connect with citizens and promote civic engagement. This civic voice app is a boon to the city dwellers as it provides timely updates on city services in addition to information on Covid-19 as well. The Boston Info voice app has been developed to be resourceful as the hour demands. Thus the efforts to enhance communication within their neighborhoods using artificial intelligence technology is worthy of mention.

The Expedia voice skill created by one of the world’s leading travel platforms, Expedia Inc. is dedicated to enriching the travel experience of its users. This voice app takes it up a notch than the usual apps confined to providing timely information and updates to its end-users. The Expedia skill attempts to enhance the user engagement experience by providing recommendations for suitable travel spots personalized to the user’s tastes and interests. Leveraging the easy, intuitive way of voice-activated technology, this skill has embedded features that fit the user’s basic needs.

Voice Stories by Volley Inc is an engaging skill with episodic interactive stories for mature audiences. The unique facet of this skill is the option to pick a genre and get the conversation going. The user gets to reel the unfolding of each story based on his choices. Hence, it is different from the usual kind of stories which are lead by a series of interactive questions. That being said, this skill is directed not for children but for adults who would like to take a trip down the story lane through the emotions the user opts for.