Happy Birthday, Alexa: An Educators Reflection on this 5 Year Old

Five. That’s not very old for a new paradigm. It’s been a bloody cutting edge tool for educators. Some of us educators have been along for the bumps, bruises, and growing pains. Just like a mama and daddy, we’ve encouraged, suggested, worked with your limits, and smiled at your accomplishments. We are proud to say “Alexa, you have such potential!”
Last week, I had the opportunity to call the Alexa help desk to ask a few questions about the Kids Edition Echo Dot. I’ve mulled over the conversation for several days now trying to process everything I took in. Big thankful shout out to James and Diana of Amazon that I kept on the line way longer than I should have. My question related to this graphic I pulled up on the Amazon website when contemplating the buy between the Echo Dot and the Echo Dot Kids Edition:

I always assumed that I could only filter on the Echo Dot Kids Edition because of FreeTime. I am happy to say that the “leveled age access” filtering is still part of the Echo Dot Kids Edition even if you choose not to continue purchasing FreeTime. To me, this is a big deal. I want to be able to filter access based on the age of a student. I feel like that is an important part of being CIPA compliant. But what does that mean? By enabling FreeTime, an Echo Dot Kids Edition device is COPPA compliant because of the parent dashboard which prevents children from enabling skills by themselves and only allows access to skills that are labeled “kids skills.” If you let FreeTime lapse, the Echo Dot Kids Edition will still protect your child from hearing the explicit version of “Apple Bottom Jeans” based on the age filter but it might let that child hear the non-explicit version of that song because FreeTime is no longer only offering kid friendly music like iHeart Radio Family.
When I first started thinking about this I decided it didn’t make sense to keep using the Echo Dot Kids Editions in the elementary classroom because a Prime membership cost of continuing FreeTime for each device is $36/year. Yes, $36 a year for a $49 device. But as I have been contemplating how we use these devices, I am considering continuing the usage without the FreeTime. The truth is, our teachers are not using third party skills that collect personally identifiable information. For better or worse, you can still only enable kids skills using the Echo Dot Kids Edition even if FreeTime lapses. For a teacher that wants to create their own skills using blueprints, this still seems like a pretty safe bet for classrooms when a district has parents sign permissions for the district to exercise their rights on behalf of parents regarding access.

Alexa, as you grow up I hope you allow whitelisting of skills that are labeled educational but not as kids. I hope you’ll continue to look for ways to create pathways for teachers to benefit from the voice paradigm. I hope you will continue to create ways where people feel comfortable with privacy issues. Alexa, no matter how frustated I seem at times, you are doing a great job. Keep up the good work growing in wisdom and stature!

