Concord Elementary School in the Garnet Valley School District is leading the way in using digital voice assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa, as learning tools in the classroom, writes Kathy Boccella for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The school uses Alexa to answer students’ questions, spell a word, conduct learning drills, or play relaxing background music while timing a quiz.

“What’s really funny is that they listen to Alexa a lot more cheerfully than they listen to us,” said Marianne Maye, a second-grade teacher at Concord Elementary.

The Garnet Valley School District is one of four districts nationwide taking part in a pilot program with a developer of askMyClass, the Alexa app for schools.

The app searches among 30,000 potential Alexa functions to select and host the appropriate ones to help children in class.

“There are thousands of voice apps on Alexa, all basically with a single purpose or function,” said askMyClass cofounder Aparna Ramanathan. “Our purpose was to bring it all together, so in one place, you can access what you need for a classroom.”

Read more about Concord Elementary School’s participation in the pilot program in the Philadelphia Inquirer by clicking here.