The Generation AI project promoting AI literacy in children and young people has won the 2025 national Open Educational Resource Award. The award was presented on Tuesday, May 27, at the Open Science Summer Days in Helsinki.
According to the award presenters, the Generation AI project is highly timely, the materials are openly available, and they are based on co-design, which is why the award for open educational material of the year was decided to be given to this project.
Generation AI is a multidisciplinary research project funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC) and is one of the projects in the SHIELD program. It provides research-based tools and learning units that enable children and young people to learn how artificial intelligence and social media work, invent and develop their own AI-powered applications, and critically assess the personal and societal impacts of technology that utilizes artificial intelligence.
Open applications to support teaching AI skills
One of the reasons for the award was the Teachable Machine – a visual application developed in the project that allows students to create their own computer vision-based classification applications without programming skills. Users go through the entire machine learning workflow from data collection to application deployment. The tool is responsive, secure, and accessible – and released under the open-source MIT license. Teachable Machine supports a total of eleven languages, including Finnish.
Another key innovation is SoMeBot – a social media simulator that leverages explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). It makes visible the hidden mechanisms underlying social media operations, such as data collection, profiling, and recommendation. The tool was released in spring 2025 together with a comprehensive educational material package. SoMeBot is available in Finnish and English.
Applications and supporting teaching materials have been developed together with teachers and students
The Generation AI project develops tools and supporting educational materials together with children, young people, and teachers. Three years of collaboration have brought together teachers, students, and researchers to jointly design, implement, and evaluate learning units and educational technologies suitable for school teaching that support children and young people's data agency.
"Technologies using artificial intelligence are becoming an increasingly strong part of our daily lives. We believe that everyone should understand some of the key principles of artificial intelligence so they can use it consciously, critically, and responsibly, and feel empowered to shape their own digital world and future," says Prof. Matti Tedre, project leader from the University of Eastern Finland.
The award is the project's third award within a year; previous awards came from conferences IEEE ICALT 2024 and AACE EdMedia 2025.
Explore the tools and materials:
Teachable Machine: https://tm.generation-ai-stn.fi
SoMeBot: https://somekone.generation-ai-stn.fi
Teaching materials: https://www.generation-ai-stn.fi/materiaalit
Project website: https://www.generation-ai-stn.fi
For more information and interview requests:
For more information about the project
Prof. Matti Tedre, Professor, Project Leader, matti.tedre@uef.fi
Prof. Kati Mäkitalo, Professor, Interaction Lead, kati.makitalo@oulu.fi
For more information about the materials
Co-design of applications and materials in schools: Juho Kahila, juho.kahila@uef.fi
Educational technologies: Nicolas Pope, Postdoctoral Researcher, nicolas.pope@uef.fi and Teemu Roos, Professor, teemu.roos@helsinki.fi
Teaching materials: Jari Laru, University Lecturer, jari.laru@oulu.fi and Jussi Koivisto, jussi@codeschool.fi
