Voice Assistants Not Ready for Classrooms

Representatives of Amazon and Google made it clear at the recent International Society for Technology in Education conference that voice-assistant devices should not be used in K-12 classrooms because of compliance and privacy issues. While privacy issues is still a concern, the devices are finding their way into campus dorms and classrooms.

Amazon donated 1,600 Echo Dots to engineering students at Arizona State University, Tempe, and is providing grants to institutions that create class curriculum using Alexa-enabled devices and mentorship. Additionally, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, will give some students the option to connect an Echo Dot device to their university accounts this fall.

Jason Hong, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, has studied the home use of Alexa and said the device isn’t quite ready for educational use. He noted they could be handy in specific college situations, such as a lab where students need hands-free interaction but added there are risks, such as demands to view the dialogue history stored in the device.

“These things are not geared for schools and for lots of people at the same time,” Hong said, adding that could change as the technology improves. “I think it could be really exciting, but also rather thorny.”

MIT Students Hack Disability Solutions

According to the World Health Association, more than a billion people worldwide need one or more assistive devices to address physical, communication, or other disabilities. However, about 90% of them lack access to such technologies.

To raise awareness of the situation, jump-start innovation, and encourage students to consider careers developing assistive devices, the Assistive Technology Hackathon (ATHack) brings together teams of MIT students every year to brainstorm, design, and create solutions for problems faced by specific disabled “clients” from the Boston/Cambridge community.

The event is interdisciplinary and open to anyone. ATHack coordinators asemble teams of students with complementary skills, interests, and academic backgrounds. Clients often act as co-designers and meet with their teams at a dinner a couple weeks ahead of the hackathon to lay out the particular problem they need solved.

On the day of the event, the teams have 11 hours to produce their solution, from start to finish. It’s understood by all involved that the result may not be an immediately usable prototype, but development can continue beyond the event with some help and resources from the organizers.

Of this year’s 15 projects, eight or nine were completed by the deadline. Among the winners selected were a portable seat to allow someone to use a shower while traveling and an armband that vibrates to alert a hearing-impaired wearer when someone rings their doorbell.

More than 300 participants have collaborated on 70-plus projects since ATHack was launched five years ago. Its organizers hope to post a compilation database of hackathon projects within the next few months.