San Lorenzo brings AI literacy into classrooms: the real value is teaching students to verify, not just to use

By La Lupa Medios · October 16, 2026.

Fourth- and fifth-year students at Secondary School No. 549 «María Catalina Echevarría de Vidal» in San Lorenzo (Santa Fe, Argentina) have completed the Municipality's artificial intelligence training course. According to the outlet, Mayor Leonardo Raimundo and Secretary of General Coordination Alejandro Cabral handed them their certificates on Friday.

The initiative began as a project submitted by students from Colegio Misericordia under the Youth Participatory Budget, a mechanism through which young people propose and vote on how part of the municipal funds is spent. Its stated goal is to promote critical, responsible and ethical use of new technologies.

The course is taught by Jaquelina Serrano, who holds a degree in Education and works as an educational technology advisor. According to the source, the content covers:

- the presence of AI in everyday life; - how to write instructions (*prompts*) to get better results; - verifying generated information; - the risks: privacy, digital footprint, fake news, manipulated images and deepfakes (synthetic content that imitates a real person); - authorship and the importance of preserving critical thinking and original creative work.

The activities are hands-on: participants must create, verify and reflect on the results. The next sessions will take place at the Santa Rosa and Misericordia schools. The source does not give figures on participants, hours or any evaluation of results.

**Our take.** This is a small, local story, but it points to something important: the hard part of AI literacy is not learning to use the tool but learning to question what it produces. Using a chatbot takes an afternoon to learn. Verifying information, understanding what data you are handing over and recognizing a manipulated image all require judgment, and judgment can be trained.

It is also a good sign that the program grew out of a student project. Young people already live alongside these tools, and institutions tend to arrive late. More broadly, cases of abuse involving AI-generated images among minors, documented in several countries, show that the technical barrier has all but disappeared. That is why training on privacy and deepfakes is not an add-on but a core component.

Now for the caveat: without impact data, we don't know whether these talks change behavior. One-off training is no substitute for sustained instruction built into the curriculum, and the real test will be whether anyone measures what students retain and whether teachers receive ongoing support.

In the short term, the job market awaiting these students will be uncertain and demanding. In the long term, a society living with powerful AI needs citizens who can use it without being manipulated by it. In our view, that foundation of judgment is the cheapest and most lasting investment in making sure the abundance the technology promises reaches everyone, not just those who already know how to question it.