Last month, we announced a new free course series on building Alexa skills in collaboration with Codecademy. Today, we’re excited to announce the addition of two advanced courses to the series. These build on the introductory courses we launched last month. With this series, you can learn about Alexa skill-building through the online, interactive learning interface that Codecademy provides.

What You'll Learn

One of the best ways to learn a new technology is by doing. The Learn Alexa series on Codecademy is designed to do just that. The course walks you through the skill-building process step by step, and explains skill-building concepts along the way. If you haven’t already, check out our introductory courses, Build Your First Skill and Create Your Lambda Function.

In the third course in the series, Get User Input, you will learn how to capture and read user input through custom and built-in slots. Then, in the fourth course, Add Persistence to Your Skill, you will learn how to add short- and long-term memory to your skill by persisting session attributes during a single session as well as across multiple skill sessions through Amazon DynamoDB.

In addition, you will also learn the fundamentals of generating dialogue using the Alexa Skills Kit SDK for Node.js. These include lessons like how to make Alexa speak, listen, and re-prompt.

Through these courses, you will get to create a flashcards skill which will quiz the user on a chosen programming language. Here is a sample dialog:

User: Open Codecademy Flashcards

Alexa: Welcome to Flashcards. I can help test your knowledge in Ruby, Python, or JavaScript. Which language would you like to practice?

User: JavaScript

Alexa: Okay, I will ask you some questions about Ruby. Let's begin. In JavaScript, how do you find the length of a string?

User: Is it length?

Alexa: Nice job! The correct answer is length. You have gotten one out of five JavaScript questions correct. Here's your next question: How do you print to the console or terminal?

And so on.

The Codecademy courses also have Echosim.io, a browser-based simulator by iQuarius Media, built in, so you can test your skills from within the Codecademy interface.

Get Quizzed

At the end of each course, we provide two ways to test and practice what you learned. You can take the multiple-choice quiz to test your knowledge. You can also tackle an optional project that puts your skill-building knowledge to use.

Get Started

Visit the course series on Codecademy to start learning today. We can’t wait to see what you build.

Build a Skill, Earn Developer Perks 

Got skills? Bring your big idea to life with the Alexa Skills Kit and earn perks through our new tiered rewards system. Publish a skill in October, and receive a limited edition Alexa Skills developer t-shirt. If 100 unique users use your skill in its first 30 days in the Alexa Skills Store, you can also apply to receive a free Echo Dot to help you make Alexa even smarter. Learn more about our promotion and start building today.