8 essential qualities of a digital literacy curriculum

4. Integrates with core or enrichment content to deepen core content knowledge as students simultaneously learn to use technology tools and skills.

5. Engages students with a balance of online and offline activities to deepen understanding. Ones that stimulate students and provide interactive opportunities for instruction, guided practice, and application of concepts and skills through features like graphics, audio and video, personalized learning, and gamified environments.

6. Promotes important learning in ways other formats can’t including interactive content, audio, video, auto-scored instruction and assessments, online gradebooks, and reports. Assuming the curriculum will be delivered online, it should be regularly updated based on changing skill needs as well as student and educator feedback.

7. Saves time, especially for busy educators. Student and teacher should be able to access and use the curriculum intuitively or with minimal training. If delivered online, the curriculum contains auto-scored instructional and assessment content, an online dashboard, gradebook, and reports for individual students, classes, schools. and district.

8. Provides technical and instructional support for educators that is accessible via interactive chat, phone, and email or similar help so that their questions can be addressed quickly.

Using these criteria, my friend and her team ultimately decided to purchase a digital-literacy curriculum that included opportunities for the educators to create and add their own content. By blending a pre-built, standards-aligned digital- literacy curriculum with their own core-content lessons, they helped their students build their digital-literacy skills while deepening core content knowledge at the same time!

If you are considering purchasing a digital literacy curriculum, building or modifying your own, I would recommend considering using these themes as the criteria for assessing and evaluating its potential for effectiveness. You may also wish to consult with sources like ISTE or the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) as way to find additional criteria that may be helpful as you prepare your students to excel in a digital world.

[Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Learning.com Newsroom.]