Amazon donates $525,000 to Canada Learning Code to modernize K-12 computer science curriculum

Amazon donates $525,000 to help Canada Learning Code and its computer science education initiatives in the country. Canada Learning Code is the leading national charity that champions digital literacy education. This donation will help support the development of a Canadian kindergarten-to-grade-12 computer science education framework. It will also help with other coding education programs, which includes a traveling mobile classroom and Canada Learning Code Week. This donation helps the charity create 275,000 “learner” experiences over three years.

As Melissa Sariffodeen, CEO of Canada Learning Code, said, this donation will help kids learn the skills they need for the future. “This donation by Amazon will have a transformative effect on Canadian skills development needed to prosper in the digital economy,” she said. At the moment, only three out of the 13 Canadian provinces and territories offer formal opportunities in the curriculum to learn these skills. Updating the curriculum will help accelerate the entry of women and those from less advantaged backgrounds into more in-demand roles.

These are the best-sellers from record-breaking Amazon Prime Day

Amazon has a lot to celebrate with its recent Prime Day sale, the 36-hour event schedule from July 16^th to 17^th marked its largest shopping event ever, surpassing sales from last year’s Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Prime Day. Over five million items were sold worldwide in different categories including: toys, apparel, beauty products, PCs, computer accessories, and kitchen items. Globally, July 16 marked the best sales day ever for Fire TV and Kindle e-readers. In Canada, the best-selling products included the Echo Dot, Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 multi-use programmable pressure cooker, LifeStraw Personal Water Filter, and Bose QuietComfort Noise Cancelling headphones.

Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition will soon support Spotify

If you’ve made a kid-friendly playlist for your child, you can soon stream that through their Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition. Amazon will soon let parents pair their kids’ devices with their Spotify account. This integration will automatically filter out any songs with explicit language, which parents can toggle off in Amazon’s FreeTime dashboard. But now, at least your child can listen to his or her favorite song without needing you to play it for them.

On top of this, the Echo Dot Kids Edition is getting new Disney content, such as character alarms and an updated “Disney Dailies.” The latter is a skill that lets kids listen to jokes and other content from familiar Disney characters. Amazon is set to roll out the update this week.

Source: The Verge

Amazon Alexa app on iOS now has voice control support

It took many, many months (or even a year or two) since Amazon has been able to add voice control support to its Amazon Alexa iOS app. It might have felt like this wasn’t going to happen but it’s finally here. The update will be rolling out to users in the coming days so keep an eye for it. What this brings to users is the ability to ask for help from Alexa. Since it’s not baked in natively, you’ll need to tap a button to interact with it. But once you do that, you can ask Alexa questions, access skills, listen to music, and control smart devices. There will also be a visual component in the app for queries related to weather, sports, movies, and calendar.

Source: TechCrunch