How Amazon Alexa is helping children learn to code

Primary school pupils jumped at the chance to write code for our digital assistant Alexa – thanks to Amazon’s Digital Careers Day.

Hosted at Amazon’s UK head office in Shoreditch, East London, pupils from Kilburn Primary School, Westbridge Primary School and Balgowan Primary School wrote code for new Alexa Skills – while also developing their own STEM skills.

The Digital Careers Day provided STEM-focused workshops, including tech talks with our developers and engineers.

Ben Elliss, Director of Software Development for Amazon, has more than twenty years of experience in the industry and he was delighted to share insights about his career with the pupils.

Speaking after the workshop, Ben said: “Promoting STEM as a career choice for children is incredibly important to us at Amazon. I hope that by opening the doors to our UK head office, we have opened new eyes to the exciting possibilities of a career in innovation.”

After learning how to build Alexa Skills, the children successfully wrote code for the digital assistant – and we were blown away by their creative, unusual and exciting ideas.

At Amazon we are proud to promote the diverse range of careers available to young people who choose to pursue further study in STEM subjects. This is part of our long-term commitment to STEM education in the UK.

We previously hosted Camp Amazon during British Science Week, which saw 1,200 school children take part in CREST-approved STEM workshops in partnership with the British Science Association.

We have also launched a£1m SME Apprenticeship Fund and new Amazon Academy programme as part of a package of new measures to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) upskill their workforce in vital retail and digital skills. The SME Apprenticeship Fund will also enable the creation of over 150 Digital Marketing, Business Administrator and Customer Services roles, who will work full-time for SMEs that sell on Amazon.

We would like to say a huge thank you to all the staff and young people who joined us at our head office for the Digital Careers Day. We’re excited to discover where this new generation of builders, inventors and innovators will take us next!