Science Techbook | Ģ��ý

How to Evaluate a Digital Science Program for Schools

David Bryan — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:59:17 +0000

Key takeaways

When evaluating a digital science program, ensure it earns its place in the classroom like any technology should.
10 key areas to explore: grade-band coverage; standards alignment; NGSS alignment and 3D learning; phenomena-based learning; inquiry-based instruction; student engagement with digital science content; teacher workflow and lesson planning; differentiation, intervention, and enrichment; assessment, reporting, and instructional data; and professional learning and implementation support.
Use our list of what effective science programs do based on current research to aid your decision-making.

If you saw of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment given to eighth-grade students in 2024, then you may be concerned like many other education leaders. Students’ average science scores were down, and they reported that they had fewer chances to carry out scientific practices such as designing investigations, using evidence to support claims, and building and presenting arguments.

Addressing this won’t be easy, especially since educators say that they don’t have the resources they need to like they want to. In light of budget limitations and staff shortages in districts across the U.S., you’ll want to ensure any science program you adopt will be worth the implementation time and effort. We put together this guide to evaluating a digital science program to smooth the process.

What Districts Should Consider Before Adoption

When thinking about adopting a digital science program, we recommend starting with the idea that every technology earns its place in the classroom. Ģ��ý has created a resource specifically for education leaders: Learning by Design: A District Framework for Evaluating Classroom Technology. This framework identifies six dimensions for deciding whether a technology was built to enable learning through distinct, technology-based instructional practices not easily replicated with print materials or offline activities.

Once you’re confident that a digital science program is worth investigating further, there are 10 areas to explore more in depth.

Grade-Band Coverage Across Elementary, Middle, and High School

Does the program support instruction across grades K–12 or is it focused on one or two grade bands (K–5, 6–8, and/or 9–12)? Choosing a K–12 science program may offer benefits such as easier school- or district-wide implementation and educator training and reduced mental load for your team when choosing instructional resources. Also worth checking on programs that cover a combination of elementary, middle, and high school science: You’ll want to make sure that content is age appropriate and relevant for students in each of the different grade levels to meet their developing capabilities and needs.

Standards Alignment

When a curriculum claims to be aligned to standards, what evidence does it provide? Does it document what standard or standards are covered in each lesson and provide a scope and sequence? Documentation may exist separately from lessons, but especially with edtech, there may be more than one way to see standards covered in each lesson. Of course, a supplemental science program will not cover all the standards that a core curriculum will, but you should be easily able to see what standards are addressed.

NGSS Alignment and Three-Dimensional Learning

More than 40 states have adopted the (NGSS) or standards based on the framework of research that supports them. The NGSS are designed to give educators the flexibility to create engaging classroom learning experiences and improve science education for all students. If your state is NGSS aligned or has standards like them, you’ll want to ensure any science curriculum you’re considering has instructional materials that support NGSS expectations for student learning.

The NGSS approach to science instruction involves three-dimensional learning:

Crosscutting concepts (CCCs) reveal connections across physical science, life science, earth and space science, and engineering design.
Science and engineering practices (SEPs) show what scientists do to investigate the world and what engineers do to design and build systems.
Disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) consist of key ideas in science that are important across different science or engineering disciplines,

All three dimensions are combined to form standards, and each works with the other two dimensions to help students develop a cohesive understanding of science over time. A digital science program under consideration should clearly demonstrate that three-dimensional learning is built into its instructional materials.

Phenomena-Based Learning

Phenomena-based learning will likely play an important role in lessons and activities in a digital science program. In who are looking to choose or create lessons, the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) recommends identifying real-world phenomena to study. The NSTA notes the phenomena should be interesting to students and explaining the phenomena should require that students understand the targeted core ideas. Ask for access to lessons to check for phenomena-based learning.

Inquiry-Based Science Instruction

How will students explore phenomena introduced in lessons? The NSTA suggests a number of inquiry-based approaches that educators can ask of students:

Coming up with scientific questions
Planning and/or performing an investigation
Analyzing data
Constructing explanations
Developing models
Creating and presenting arguments

Does the digital science program you’re considering give your team different ways to deliver inquiry-based instruction?

Student Engagement with Digital Science Content

As our Education Insights 2025–2026 Report showed, 90% of teachers, principals, and superintendents agree that engagement is critical to their students’ success. Despite this, 80% of students say they are bored in school at some point each week. What should you look for that will keep students engaged with digital science content? In general, a program that gets students to think deeply, uses technology intentionally, and provides real-world relevance is going to be more effective.

Virtual Labs, Interactives, Videos, and Simulations

Intentional technology usage can take many different forms, such as virtual labs, interactives, videos, and simulations. Resources like these can provide the three-dimensional, phenomena-driven, and inquiry-based learning that make for exciting student investigations and develop scientific thinking:

Virtual labs let students step into the role of scientist and study phenomena or topics that would be difficult or impossible to investigate in the real world.
Interactives provide more of an active learning experience, can help break up complex ideas into more manageable pieces, and fit a variety of use cases.
Videos can make the abstract more concrete, provide real-world context, and support different learning needs.
Simulations let students explore cause and effect, model complex systems, and test predictions.

Teacher Workflow and Lesson Planning

Even though a digital science program may provide engaging lessons and content, does it make it easy for teachers to plan, assign, and deliver those lessons or share content with the class? While search functionality should be standard, technology-based programs may have other ways to help educators find and customize lessons and resources for their classrooms, such as a favorites collection or content editing tools. It may be easy to discount a program’s usability as a factor in teacher success, but poor usability may slow them down or convince them to avoid the program entirely, wasting funds and possibly reducing instructional quality.

Differentiation, Intervention, and Enrichment

Some form of support for differentiation in Tier 1 instruction is a must-have to reach as many learners as possible using a digital science program. This could be ready-to-use resources that are already differentiated, clear guidance on ways to differentiate instruction to meet different needs, or built-in technology that aids the differentiation work of your team. Since manual differentiation is such a time-intensive effort for teachers, a science program that lightens the load should be a top priority.

Ideally, you’re looking at a digital science program that also enables Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention for students who need extra support and enrichment opportunities for students who need new challenges. Student benefits from working with a familiar program include a reduced cognitive load and greater instructional coherence, which can boost learning. For schools, this reduces the complexity of teachers’ toolkits, removes the need for supplementation on their own, and may offer cost savings over purchasing separate programs for each student group.

Assessment, Reporting, and Instructional Data

Formative and summative assessments, reporting, and instructional data all support data-driven decision-making, which strengthens teaching and learning in many ways. For example:

Improves the accuracy of placement in different tiers of instruction and boosts learning outcomes of struggling students
Informs instructional decisions and differentiation aimed at meeting individual student needs
Provides insight into student, classroom, school, or district performance overall

A digital science program that provides assessment, reporting, and instructional data offers similar benefits to those mentioned in our discussion of differentiation, intervention, and enrichment. These include a lower cognitive load for students and a less complex set of tools for teachers to master. Adopting a program with robust assessments built in could open up the possibility of dropping separate assessment solutions that you might be using.

Professional Learning and Implementation Support

A digital science program will likely include some professional learning, even if it’s limited to getting started, to help your team incorporate it in classroom instruction. Beyond the basics, the vendor should either bundle more extensive professional learning with the program or offer it as a separate package. Options may be virtual or in person, on demand or live, single or multi-session, or combinations of those. Once you see what your choices are, you can match them to your needs and preferences. To be effective, professional learning will have characteristics like a focus on strategies, active learning, collaboration, models of effective practice, and more.

Be sure to dive into what implementation would involve at the district, school, and classroom levels, like how the curriculum would fit into your current educator tools and resources and integrate with existing district systems, such as an LMS. We’ve identified seven action items for successful implementation that can serve as a guide. Don’t forget to ask a key question of the vendor: What kind of implementation support can you provide to get us up and running with less time and effort?

What Makes a Digital Science Program Effective?

Here’s what current research says effective science programs do:

Offer a sequence of learning experiences that develop students’ understanding of scientific and engineering principles, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas
Explore the historical, social, cultural, and ethical aspects of science and its applications as well as engineering and its resulting technologies
Gives students opportunities to participate in a range of scientific activities and scientific thinking, including inquiry and investigation, collection and analysis of evidence, logical reasoning, and communication and application of information
Map all lessons and assessments to specific standards that are identified for educators
Offer Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 instruction using coherent language, routines, and approaches
Provide data-driven insights to inform instruction
Integrate differentiation, intervention, and enrichment coherently
Support teacher implementation through ongoing professional learning

General Questions to Ask About a Digital Science Program

Once you’ve identified a digital science program worth exploring, you may want to ask the vendor:

Do you have case studies or data from schools/districts like ours that have used this program?
What data would indicate this program is working for our students? How long should we expect it to take?
What is the total cost of implementation, including materials, professional learning, technology, and ongoing support? Over how many years?
Is there an active learning community associated with the program?

Other questions you can discuss with your team:

Does this program address the specific challenges we’re facing?
How does this program align with our district’s strategic goals and priorities for science education?
What would we need to change to successfully implement this program?
How will this program work alongside our existing initiatives?
Do we have teacher buy-in for this program?

Questions to Ask During a Science Program Demo

When you’ve scheduled a demo to see a science program in action, use this set of questions to make the most of your time:

Can you show us how units and lessons map to our state standards within the program?
Is there a scope and sequence that teachers can easily access?
What is the process for rostering students?
How are lessons organized, accessed, edited (if possible), and assigned?
Can you show us teacher and student views of lessons and activities?
What instructional supports for teachers are provided and how will they find them?
How will lessons support three-dimensional learning?
If lessons are phenomena driven, what are the different ways a student can investigate a phenomenon using your program?
Can we walk through an example of each type of resource that teachers will need to use, such as a virtual lab, interactive, video, and simulation?
Does your program offer accessibility tools and supports for students that you can demonstrate?
What student performance data does your program collect and what reporting does it provide (e.g., student, class, school, district)?
What technology is required in each classroom and school to use this program?
What support do you offer if we run into problems using the program?

Ģ��ý Science Ģ��ý

Science Techbook

This K–12 core science curriculum brings three-dimensional learning to life through ready-to-teach lessons packed with phenomena-driven instruction and immersive hands-on experiences. Science Techbook simplifies instruction and saves educators time with streamlined lesson planning, personalized differentiation, and ongoing progress monitoring. What’s more, its exclusive, original content captures student interest with real-world relevance, helping them connect science to their everyday lives.

Dive into Science Techbook with a demo!

Request Science Techbook Demo

Ģ��ý Experience

Our K–12 instructional companion Experience, which covers science, math, ELA, and careers, also offers inquiry-based learning, immersive learning activities, and real-world relevance to boost student engagement. Teachers start every day with a personalized, subject-specific starting point that provides resource recommendations organized by instructional intent, quick access to topics by grade band, standards-aligned resources filtered for grade and location, and much more!

See Experience in action with a demo!

Request Experience Demo

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Making the Move to Digital Resources

Stacie Trebes — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 19:34:14 +0000

Trying something new in your classroom can feel invigorating, but also opens many questions: How does this compare to what I’ve been doing before? Will it make things easier or more complicated? How will it impact my students?��

For Stacie Trebes, middle school teacher at Sahuarita School District, trying something new meant stepping out of her comfort zone and going digital. What she discovered was a new level of engagement with students and a refreshing take on teaching science. Read on to hear Stacie’s story of introducing Ģ��ý Science Techbook to her middle school science classroom.

Meet Stacie Trebes

Stacie Trebes, an esteemed educator in the Sahuarita Unified School District, brings over a decade of teaching experience to her current role. Her journey in education began as a substitute teacher, which laid the foundation for her teaching career. Stacie spent her first four years teaching second grade and later made the transition to middle school, where she began teaching science. It has been six years now in middle school, and she is thoroughly enjoying her time teaching science. Stacie finds fulfillment in working with middle school students, emphasizing the value of hands-on lab experiences that bring life to their learning.��

Besides having a blast in the classroom, Stacie Trebes enjoys spending time quality time with her family, which includes her husband and three children. She also enjoys reading, crafting, gardening, and writing children’s picture books

Stacie's Inspiration

I was inspired to become a teacher after my sister became a teacher! Seeing my sister’s work and how she connected with her students led me to join education. I’ve worked as a substitute and as a full-time classroom teacher. What inspired me to teach science was getting to explore all different aspects of science throughout the year. It’s so fun—you can teach a little bit of what you like, but then easily add things that you may not know as well. It ends up being super engaging because not only do the kids learn about a wide variety of topics and learn to love science, but the teacher also ends up loving the subject!

Teaching Science Before Science Techbook

Before Ģ��ý, we had outdated textbooks that we used occasionally, but I would have to dig through websites to find supplemental materials to use in my lessons. I would hunt through a ton of sources and find things to go along with the old textbooks or create lessons entirely from scratch. With Ģ��ý, everything is all in one place—right at your fingertips! I don’t have to search for lessons, texts, videos, and resources, so it’s a huge timesaver. It’s also great that the content is at the kids’ fingertips!

Introducing Digital Resources

When I heard about the research study occurring in my district, I wanted to test how effective I was at delivering digital resources. I also wanted to see how well the kids received the information from online sources and determine the actual impact of Science Techbook��on my lesson planning and teaching.

Before seeing the resources, I thought that Science Techbook was going to look like a traditional textbook or workbook on a screen. I thought the students would read passages and then answer multiple-choice questions—I didn’t realize that the lessons would include videos and hands-on learning or expect such a high level of student engagement! The best surprise was that these resources can also be accessed at home. If the students’ families are curious about what they are learning, the students can show them the exact lesson we worked on, which has helped parents and families connect to our school and feel more involved in the learning process.

Ģ��ý's Impact

When we were first introduced to Ģ��ý, the DE team held Professional Learning sessions that explored the product��from both the teacher and student perspectives. The support didn’t stop there! After those initial live sessions, they gave us ways to keep in touch, like through the help button in the platform, and they continued to check in to help us be successful in the classroom. As time passed, they added even more lessons and resources, so the DE team had another refresher course to help break down the new improvements.��

We used Science Techbook��in our lessons on a weekly basis and found that the ease of using the platform was a great perk because the students quickly grasped how to find their lessons. I also realized that Ģ��ý helps steer lesson planning in the right direction. It has state standards and clear learning objectives, and there are pieces to help teachers check for understanding, like assessments or exit tickets. It truly has all of the components of a good lesson!

“I knew Ģ��ý’s digital resources would help strengthen students’ technology skills, but the lessons also require them to use critical thinking, data analysis, and other cross-curricular skills. I’ve seen a lot of science and social studies lessons where the students use their Language Arts skills, because students are reading and writing about history and science topics!”
- Stacie Trebes, Sahuarita Unified School District Teacher

All the resources have rigorous activities to strengthen academic skills, and they also require active participation. I’ve found that the students are really engaged from start to finish—they’re reading, they’re watching videos, and they’re interested in the curriculum. The lessons are fast paced and the students enjoy them, so the hour goes by quickly!

One surprising result of using Ģ��ý was that the increased student engagement led to fewer behavior issues. Even though they have their own devices, they’re not roaming around on different websites. They’re engaged in the activities and involved in the lessons.

Lightbulb Moments

Ģ��ý helped me create a heartwarming, memorable moment for my class—we had just learned about how cancer cells develop and how researchers work to fight cancer. After the video, one student raised her hand and said, “My grandma and mom both had cancer, and they both survived. This is the type of technology that worked for them!” She went on to share that this video and her personal experience had inspired her. I’m hoping that she’ll carry that inspiration into a potential career path in medicine!��

These videos and lessons can connect to students’ lives and experiences. As a science teacher, the content of your lesson very rarely connects back to the family. Many families are glad their students are enjoying science class, but Ģ��ý brings a new level of personal connection to their content.

Advice to Other Educators

When you’re trying any new digital resource, take time to explore it! Exploring Ģ��ý to see all of its components helped me find a wide variety of resources to use in my lessons! You’ll click on one page and there’ll be another interesting page or video—it’s almost never ending. There’s so much material that taking your time to explore the videos, assessments, and support options is the best way to become comfortable before implementing the new resources. Also, take advantage of the DE team—make sure you reach out! If you have questions, they’ll get back to you, and if they don’t know the answers, they’ll find them for you.

It’s easy to feel the weight of all the different tasks we balance as teachers, but reaching out to other teachers for advice and tips can help. When we first started using Science Techbook, there was another teacher who I noticed did more with the resources, so I asked her for help! She showed me the assessments she was using, explained how to use the different videos in my lessons, and helped me find ways to create video questions for my kids. After that conversation, I was able to go back and try something new, knowing I had someone in my corner to help when I needed it!

Whether it’s a new strategy, a new resource, or an entirely new digital curriculum, trying something new could help streamline your lesson planning and re-energize your students! With support from other teachers or a curriculum partner like Ģ��ý, implementing something new in your classroom is easier than ever.

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Giving Students a Voice with SOS Strategies & Science Techbook

Jacquelyn Freeman, M.Ed — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 19:34:04 +0000

I have used Ģ��ý for several years, and the gradual change to invoke students' voices has revolutionized my classroom for the better.

I have witnessed the steady improvement in my students’ writing based on “feeling” to evidence. Students apply methodical thinking and evaluation like scientists and engineers to address abstract problem solving and reflect on issues with peers to develop solutions. The key component aiding my students in this process has been the scaffolding and open questioning found in DE Science Techbook and .��

Cultivating Collaboration

Science Techbook��introduces real-world phenomena that students can use their past experiences to connect to, helping them relate to the overall topic. For example, the Physical Science Unit in the��8th Grade��Techbook introduces the concepts of energy through waves to produce sound with wireless speakers. My students were familiar with wireless speakers, they use them all time, but they started to pause when they had to think about the “how and why” the wireless speaker worked. This moment of reflection led to deeper thinking and collaboration that then sparked personal curiosity through questioning from the material.

When combined with like the , students were able to bring their initial models and thoughts to a small collaborative group (which also helps greatly for students with performance anxiety). Through Placemat, they first explained their individual models of how the wireless speaker produced the music from the cellphone. Then, they deliberated in a one-group consensus model after sharing and troubleshooting with peers. This allowed my students to express themselves comfortably, raising their confidence, not only in science, but in their voices.��

Creating Classroom Culture & Building Critical Skills

Students tend to shy away from writing due to fear of being wrong or ostracized for thinking a specific way. The strategies from DE, such as or , help alleviate those concerns. I have seen students become emboldened when they realize their responses are in line with others, and it’s amazing to see the sense of camaraderie created among the class.

This level of support blends seamlessly when it comes to written expressions of understanding like constructing explanations. Once a safe space was created with students, I introduced another SOS strategy, , in tandem with Science Techbook concepts. I modified it to allow students to confirm or clarify their claims and supporting evidence. The questioning allowed my students to reflect in that moment why they used the chosen evidence by explaining to peers their reasoning and thought process. When it was time for revision and closing thoughts, my students used that time to develop their reasoning based on their interviews with other students. It is a great aid to helping students build critical skills, better understand the science lessons they’re learning, and really see the bigger picture for themselves.

DE Science Techbook and go hand in hand. They’ve turned my classroom into a forum of healthy discussions and empowered learners. My next plan is to expand these methods to involve parents, reinforcing the concepts learned in class and transferring them to their home and daily lives. Wish me luck!

About the Author

In addition to being a DEN STAR, Jacquelyn Freeman, teaches 8th grade science in Maryland and has a Master of Education in Educational Technology. She also serves as a Curriculum Writer, developing curricula for secondary education based on NGSS and student-centered learning strategies, as well as an 8th Grade Science Chair where she leads a team focused on creating innovative, research-based teaching strategies to encourage critical thinking in the classroom.

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