In June 2025, Oracle Academy joined forces with Oracle Social Impact and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Public Sector teams to support TeenTech Lancashire at Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, England. Across the business, we work to spark curiosity about technology and build confidence in tomorrow’s tech pioneers.
TeenTech, founded in 2008 by science and technology reporter Maggie Philbin and Chris Dodson, is an award-winning charity that helps young people explore careers in STEM. With over 30 years of experience, Philbin champions diversity in the field, and under her leadership, TeenTech provides hands-on activities and an award program to equip students with skills and opportunities for future success.
This year’s event was supported by multiple sponsors, including Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Martin Dolce, Regional Director for UK Public Sector, collaborated with the Oracle Social Impact team, including Joyce Li, to bring Oracle’s partnership to life.
Now in our third-year volunteering with TeenTech, Oracle was active across all three core zones of the day:
Ambassadors: Mentors in Action
Saran Kaur served as our TeenTech Ambassador, guiding groups of students and their teachers through the event. Ambassadors play a vital role in encouraging students, answering questions, and helping them explore challenges, all while offering a friendly, real-world view of what a career in technology looks like.
Insight Zone: Dinosaur Detection with Oracle AI
In the Insight Zone, Brendan Griffin and Joyce Li showcased our very own Dinosaur Identification AI Tool, powered by a suite of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services including:
- Oracle Generative AI (Llama model and vision capabilities)
- Container Instances
- Load Balancer
Students had an exciting time scanning toy dinosaurs using the app, which recognized and identified species based on the model’s training data. It was a race against the clock to find the “winning dinosaur” and with some impressive times (and attempts to break the app), we may have met a few future software testers from Lancashire already!
Challenge Zone: Solving the Mystery
With support from Lily Grafham, Martin Dolce, Andy Clark, Leane Matejko, and Richard Palissery, students joined the fictional Gaia Group to investigate a global environmental disaster. Divided into three teams, they used Oracle Cloud services to uncover the company, country, and cause behind the event.
Key technologies included:
- Oracle APEX
- Generative AI Agents
- OCI AI Services: Speech Services (for transcription)
- OCI AI Services: Language Services (for translation and phrase extraction)
- Streamlit (for the UI)
- Python (object detection model)
Team missions:
- The Seers analysed AI-generated images using object detection, decoded clues via British Sign Language, and identified the disaster’s country.
- The Inquisitors used Generative AI to pinpoint the responsible company by crafting targeted prompts and cross-referencing locations.
- The Semantics translated audio conversations to uncover the cause and identify the likely culprit.
Together, the teams combined their findings to solve the mystery, a collaborative showcase of cloud technology’s power in tackling complex challenges.
Inspired by TeenTech? Oracle Academy offers free access to Oracle Cloud services alongside a wide range of teaching and learning resources. Whether you want to bring real-world technology into your teaching or support your students in developing future-ready skills, we’re here to help you continue the journey beyond the event.
Not a member yet? Join now and learn more at academy.oracle.com.
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