Key takeaways
-
Start EdTech integration into curriculum by clarifying what you already have, then anchoring every digital activity to a standard and clear definition of student success.
-
Place EdTech into the right instructional moment to support instructional adjustments that yield the greatest student impact.
-
Combine repeatable routines, “one lesson, three paths” differentiation, and reflection and reuse for sustainable integration with less planning time.
EdTech may be essential for teaching in the classroom, but are you making the most of what you’re currently using? Or are you struggling to make sense of district-approved digital programs and resources? Whether you’re a new teacher who’s still figuring out exactly how their classroom will work, or you’re ready to maximize student impact, a little guidance can go a long way. Let’s look at one specific aspect of teaching with technology, integrating EdTech into curriculum, and identify ways to do so that boost student progress and reduce your workload.
1. Assess What You Have on Hand
Before you explore EdTech program and resource integration possibilities, you’ll need a general understanding of what each one is. For example, core or supplemental curriculum, content, assessments, progress monitoring, etc. If some of the programs or resources overlap, then you may need to give each a trial, but the overall process will be the same.
2. Start with the Standard and Define Success
Integrating EdTech into curriculum isn’t about using technology for its own sake, so keep standards proficiency for students as your main goal. Core and supplemental EdTech curricula should have standards alignment noted throughout units, lessons, and activities to guide you. Content may be only accessible through lessons and activities, but if it is stand-alone, it should have indications of what standards it aligns to.
Also, consider how your students will demonstrate proficiency on the standards you’re teaching. Can you see evidence of learning using EdTech? If so, does the program present this automatically, or will you need to conduct checks yourself? Using a program’s built-in system can certainly be a time saver.
Discovery Education and Standards
Every Discovery Education program is aligned to state standards across the U.S., and it’s easy to see which standards are covered in units, lessons, activities, and multimedia content. Depending on the program, students may demonstrate what they’ve learned through continuous formative assessment or separate assessments. For example, DreamBox Math lessons use continuous formative assessment, with the program adjusting in real time as students make decisions. Experience and Science Techbook offer customizable assessments through an Assessment Builder.
3. Choose the Best Instructional Time for EdTech
When does it make sense to incorporate EdTech into your planned lessons? You may find opportunities to use a program or resource for any or all of the following objectives:
- Launch or Engage: Capture student interest with engaging content and activate prior knowledge.
- Teach or Model: Provide direct instruction (whole class, small group, individual) and show examples of the subject.
- Practice: Offer guided or independent opportunities to build skills.
- Apply: Give students ways to turn general or theoretical knowledge into real-world projects.
- Assess: Conduct quick checks for understanding or determine proficiency levels at defined times.
- Extend: Help learners who need extra support or challenge those who are ready for advanced work.
Tip: If this seems like too much to consider addressing all at once, start with practice and assessment objectives, which will have the highest impact on students at the minimum cost in time and effort on your part.
Discovery Education and Instructional Timing
You can integrate Discovery Education programs into your instructional routines at any point during the day. Captivate students with curated videos and activities that bring real-world connections to topics across reading/ELA, math, science, and social studies with Experience. Inspire learners to make discoveries by acting like scientists and engineers to solve inquiry-based problems using Science Techbook. Give struggling students a fun, gamified way to develop math skills at home by assigning lessons in DreamBox Math.
4. Plan the Learning Task, Then Match the Tool
Define the student task in one sentence using a simple formula like “Students will [verb] [content] to demonstrate [skill].” Then choose the EdTech program or resource that will support this with the right feature, such as interactive exploration, reading or video with prompts, writing or discussion, adaptive practice, lab or simulation, or other task-based learning.
Tip: Once you’ve built a reusable task bank of 3–5 task types per unit, you can rotate them and save yourself the effort of constant task creation.
Discovery Education and Student Tasks
Add immersive experiences to your lessons with TimePod Adventures, Sandbox, and 3D Virtual Field Trips in Experience. Provide math skills practice at just the right level with automatic adaptation within lessons in DreamBox Math. Get students actively exploring, recording data, and analyzing results with hands-on activities and labs in Science Techbook.
5. Differentiate
Since differentiation is a proven way to ensure all students can learn, it’s critical that you find ways to do this in your classroom. One approach that reduces the amount of prep necessary is the “one lesson, three paths” approach in which you build three parallel pathways: on level, support, and extend. One of the best reasons to integrate EdTech into curriculum is that many programs and resources include either automatic differentiation or a variety of content modalities to choose from, like video, text with supports, or interactive activities.
Tip: Differentiate inputs like text level and scaffolding from outputs like how students demonstrate learning, rather than creating three different lesson plans.
Discovery Education and Differentiation
Finding the right curriculum-aligned resources and content in Experience is easy with the help of Explore and Search tools, plus you’ll find suggestions in the Curated for You section. DreamBox Math’s Intelligent Adaptive Learning™ responds in real time to a student’s mathematical decisions, providing scaffolding when needed and adjusting the learning pathway in between lessons.
6. Teach with Tight Routines
Since students respond well to consistency, you can reduce possible resistance to using EdTech with daily and weekly routines. The general daily routine would be to define an objective, start the task using EdTech, check understanding with a quick output, and adjust instruction or move to group work. Depending on the grade level you’re teaching, you could use one of these models:
- Elementary School: stations/rotation model
- Middle School: workshop model (mini-lesson → independent work → conference)
- High School: blended model (brief direct instruction → independent lab or task)
Discovery Education and Routines
DreamBox Math gives teachers flexibility to use it for rotations or for independent work, in school or at home. Science Techbook is perfect for delivering brief direct instruction followed by independent virtual investigations.
7. Check Learning and Respond
Another great reason to integrate EdTech into curriculum is for easy, potentially customizable ways to perform quick checks for understanding right after a lesson. This may be something you assign within a program or manually run, but often this is part of built-in instructional routines. Review your options while you’re planning your lessons and lean on automaticity as much as possible, which will help you respond quickly with the appropriate approach (reteach, practice, or extension).
Discovery Education and Learning Checks
Discovery Education programs significantly decrease the time and effort required to monitor and respond to student learning. In fact, DreamBox Math’s continuous formative assessment and resulting adaptive instruction happen automatically. With Experience’s Quiz tool, you can create, assign, and grade quizzes that check for understanding in low-pressure, fun ways.
8. Reflect, Save, and Reuse
After delivering a lesson, reflect on it by answering three questions:
- What worked?
- What didn’t?
- What will I tweak next time?
Then save your best prompt, student exemplar, and differentiation step for later reuse as a lesson shell. One or more may come from an EdTech program or resource that you were testing or experienced with already.
If a particular technology isn’t supporting student learning or easing your workload as anticipated, then you might want to pursue program-specific training or implementation-oriented professional learning. Remember that you can start small, with one unit, one routine, and one tool.
Discovery Education and Long-Term Success
Our programs are proven to power progress with engaging content and personalized paths to learning for students and research-backed instructional design, high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), timely insights into individual and class performance, and easily accessible supports for educators.
Explore more of what Discovery Education offers to students, educators, and administrators starting with our Resources for Educators.
