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Tech-savvy Central Bucks teen creates Amazon Alexa skill to help district families keep organized

Ashley R. Williams
Bucks County Courier Times

With just four words, a tech-savvy Bucks County teen has simplified learning about upcoming events in Pennsylvania's third-largest school district.

“Alexa — open Central Bucks.” 

Tamanend Middle School eighth-grader Alaina Ahuja, 13, created an Amazon Alexa Skill for parents and students of the Central Bucks School District’s 23 schools. Alaina, who began coding at 6, says she first created the useful skill for Jamison Elementary while in the sixth grade.

“There were a lot of events going on at the time, and it was hard to keep track of them,” the Warwick Township resident said of her motivation to create the skill, which users can download from the Amazon store for their Amazon Alexa devices. 

The Central Bucks skill lets parents and students stay up to date on what’s happening in their schools, including schedule changes due to inclement weather.

Users can say commands like, “Alexa — ask Central Bucks about Titus,” for event information on their campus.

Alaina Ahuja, a 13-year-old eighth grader at Tamanend Middle School, created a skill for Amazon Alexa devices. The skill updates Central Bucks students on upcoming events.

The bright student recently migrated the skill over to Amazon Web Services and added new features like connecting it to the Central Bucks School District’s Twitter handle, showing users the district’s latest tweets.

“This one is kind of an optional feature, but if you have an Alexa device and if you allow it on your Alexa app, it can give you a yellow light notification anytime a tweet comes in about school closures through the CBSD Twitter handle,” said Alaina, who plans to become an entrepreneur when she's older. “I'm working on a lot of different features to add to the skill, and I'm enhancing it regularly.”

She created it using the Alexa Developer Console and her knowledge of a programming language called Python. Alaina even offers a step-by-step tutorial of the skill-making process on her blog.

The Alexa Developer Console lets her see how many people are using her skill and which functionalities are most popular.

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“If I check for the last 30 days, there has been an increase of 32 new, unique customers and 35 new people have enabled the skill,” Alaina shared as she checked the stats.

“Seventy percent of people are using the upcoming events feature, and 15% of the people are using the Twitter feed,” she added.

Developing an Alexa skill sounds complicated, but it came naturally for the gifted problem solver, who made her first iOS iPhone app when she was in the fourth grade. 

Inspired by her own tendency to misplace things, Alaina, then 9, created the lost-and-found app for her elementary school in New Jersey for its invention fair. 

Alaina Ahuja's Central Bucks skill for Amazon Alexa devices is downloadable from the Amazon store.

“I created it with a programming language called Swift,” Alaina said.

“The school would upload pictures of lost objects, and parents could check if any of the stuff belonged to their kids, so they would know where any missing water bottles or hats or coats went,” she said.

Alaina’s father helped introduce her to coding by signing her up for an MIT Scratch account when she was 6.

The programming language and online community lets children program and create games.

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“It’s a block-based program, my dad got me a bunch of books on that,” Alaina said. “I learned to make plenty of different games, simple stuff like that.”

When she was 10, her dad bought her a kit that allowed her to build robots, and the following year, she started programming on a device called Raspberry Pi.

“It's more or less sort of a circuit board that you can program with its own electric wires and lights,” the tech whiz explained.

Alaina’s already proven to be wise beyond her years when it comes to technology, and now, she’s helping other kids learn about coding. 

Computer education isn’t as easily accessible to every child, she says, adding that computer programming summer camps can cost parents thousands of dollars.

Central Bucks student Alaina Ahuja's achievements in technology were recognized by Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick.

“I really want some way that people who are less fortunate can also learn how to code and learn about technology,” Alaina said.

It’s why she taught free Scratch classes over the summer and free Python coding classes during the fall at the Warminster Township Library with the help of Ann Duffy, the youth services librarian.

The eight-week, 45-minute to an hour-long classes were geared toward children ages 6 and older.

Alaina’s tremendous talents have not gone unnoticed.

In October 2020, congressman Brian Fitzpatrick requested that a flag in Alaina’s honor be flown on Capitol Hill in recognition of her tech achievements and outstanding commitment to academics.

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While most people don’t join social networking platform LinkedIn until they’re getting established in their careers, Alaina already has already gained about 300 connections of CEOs, founders and chief technology officers.

She says she reaches out whenever she needs help with coding. “Programming, honestly, it's not easy,” Alaina said.

She encourages other young learners to get involved in the world of STEM to help solve some of the world’s many problems.

“We all see the little things that we could fix in the world, but I feel a few of us actually try to get in the fray and try to fix those problems,” Alaina said.

“It doesn't matter how you do it, it might be through technology, it might be something else that very few people do, but whatever your skill set is, try to use it to benefit the world and people around you,” she said.