Zack Cronin
What Is a Digital Curriculum?
Digital curriculum is your educational content but in digital form. It can be your core curriculum, supplemental resources, or both! Digital curriculum comes in the form of text, images, video, audio, and interactive modules.
So, what makes digital curriculum so special? It takes your already effective, standards-aligned content and makes it even more powerful. It does this by making it customizable, accessible, engaging, and equitable.
Digital curriculum can easily be customized, adjusted, and shared to help with student remediation, understanding, and comprehension. Ultimately this accelerates learning while teachers enjoy easier lesson planning and increased access to resources.
Why It’s Time For You to Adopt a Digital Curriculum
A survey by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics found that 94% of public schools are providing digital devices, such as laptops or tablets to students this year. Further, 72% of respondents are providing some sort of digital literacy education.
With states, districts, and schools investing to bring technology into the classroom, it’s time that curriculum catches up as well.
So the question stands, why do we still focus on curriculum that comes on paper or in textbooks? It is time for states, districts, and schools to focus on adopting digital curricula in 2023.
The Benefits of Digital Curriculum
More Customizable Learning Experiences
The ink and paper in textbooks cannot be edited. Third-party resources from marketplaces don’t fit with your core curriculum or standards.
But, digital curriculum is easily adjusted, tweaked, and customized with just a few clicks. It can also be distributed instantly, with no need for paper, printing, stapling, or anything else.
Digital curriculum provides students with a more customized and personalized learning experience. It is tailor-made to fit their needs, with little to no extra effort on the teacher’s behalf.
Reduced Learning and Achievement Gaps
When digital curriculum is combined with standards-aligned assessments and benchmarks in a digital curriculum management platform like Kiddom, it becomes even more powerful.
Data from the assessments are visualized as easy-to-understand insights within the platform. Teachers can instantly see where each student in their class stands. Administrators know how their school will perform on state assessments before they are taken.
When teachers can see exactly where students lie in relation to standards, they can place them in groups and provide additional work or remedial action before performance slips.
Many curriculums are also interactive and engaging, which can make learning more interesting and fun for students. It provides students with access to a wider range of educational materials, such as videos, audio, and interactive modules which can help to deepen their understanding of the material.
Increased Student Performance
Studies have found that technology in the classroom helped students score 80% higher on state assessments.
How? Simple, just as described above, teachers can identify underperforming students, easily customize digital curriculum to meet their needs, and instantly deliver it to them, either as individuals or as a group.
Decrease Teacher Workload
We’ve said it over and over again, teachers are overworked, overwhelmed, and unhappy. They spend their days in classrooms with students, and when they are not there they are in meetings, planning lessons, grading, doing administrative tasks, or pitching in at the school.
Fortunately, a digital curriculum presents a solution for the teachers’ lack of time, especially in a digital curriculum platform.
First, Kiddom includes standards-aligned, educator-created presentations for every curriculum. That means teachers spend less time preparing for lessons and creating materials. Everything is ready to go!
Next, if any sort of tweak, modification, update, or customization is needed, it can be done in a few clicks. Teachers can modify the curriculum on their own, select a version shared by a peer, or by a curriculum editor.
Additionally, when you use a high-quality digital curriculum, whether it be for your core or supplemental resources, teachers spend less time searching for materials on marketplaces or third-party sites, saving them both precious time and money.
Further, many question types are automatically graded, meaning teachers can save hours of rifling through papers and logging scores. For questions that aren’t auto-graded, tools like Assignment View allow teachers to grade on either a question-by-question basis to maintain context, or use a traditional student-by-student flow.
Better Data and Insights
Data has improved every part of our lives, so why not use it in the classroom as well? Introducing a digital curriculum opens the door to accurate, reliable, and insightful data that stands to transform your school’s performance.
In the classroom, every teacher gets direct insight into individual student performance, with the ability to provide remedial action when necessary. Administrators know exactly how their schools will perform on state assessments before they are ever taken.
Perhaps the most powerful insights you can get from data provided by a digital curriculum is the impact of the curriculum itself. You can understand exactly how the content is working, who it is working for, and where improvements can be made to drive overall student performance.
Cost Savings
Finally, of course, there is a cost savings when using digital curriculum, both immediately and in the long run.
Unlike traditional textbooks, digital curricula can be updated and maintained easily and at a lower cost. Additionally, digital curricula can be easily shared amongst educators. This reduces printing costs, and waste, and increases operational efficiency.
Unlocking Digital Curriculum With a Digital Curriculum Management Platform
Digital curriculum becomes even more powerful when combined with a digital curriculum management platform.
When a digital curriculum is used in a platform like Kiddom, its effectiveness is exponentially increased. Kiddom not only houses the curriculum itself, but also pre-made presentations, assignments, assessments, and grading tools so teachers can combine their curriculum with data and insights to know exactly where each student stands, easily create learning groups, and know class performance before standard tests occur.
In conclusion, K-12 schools should adopt digital curriculum because it can provide students with more flexibility and personalized learning experiences, increase student engagement and motivation, improve collaboration and communication, save schools money, and prepare students for the future.
Furthermore, digital curriculum can help teachers save time on administrative tasks and focus more on teaching. It can also help ensure that all students, regardless of their background, have access to the same quality of education. Additionally, digital curriculum can help teachers gain access to a wealth of educational resources and support from other teachers and experts. With the help of digital curriculum, teachers can create a more equitable and engaging learning environment for all students.
Kiddom seamlessly connects the most critical aspects of teaching and learning on one platform.
For the first time, educators can share and manage digital curriculum, differentiate instruction, and assess student work in one place. Learners can take assessments online, see student performance data with the click of a button, and teachers have the insight and tools they need to create individual learning paths.
Ready to Bring Digital Curriculum to Your School or District?
Connect with us in a 15-minute meeting to learn more about available pre-packaged curriculum and assessments, and how the Kiddom education platform can support your learning community.
