My two cents: that’s too old, can’t do any recent good stuff. Write your own LED controller 
If you need an existing smart speaker design to use as a base, you’ve got newer options. They’re all in limbo, but they’re all more functional than the Mk1:
- The Mk2 isn’t out yet, but it will be. The operative components are a daughter board, made by MycroftAI, and a Pi4, with a touchscreen. They’ve provided STL files for the enclosure. I doubt you could RYO, but that does remind me to ask @gez-mycroft whether MycroftAI is considering the SJ-201 audio board as a standalone product for makers
- Picroft is less attended at the moment, while MycroftAI is in Product Release Mode, but it still exists
- OpenVoiceOS is in prealpha (images available for the brave.) It’s a community smart speaker image. Same dev team as HiveMind, which is why HiveMind has gotten so little attention lately. We’re looking where our users are looking. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for your classroom, but there’s a decent chance we hit alpha 1 before the Mk2 becomes available, so you should know we exist.