Digitising the Curriculum: Where to Start

Digitising the curriculum does not mean copying the book into a PDF; it means rebuilding the lesson to be heard and watched. A school or platform starts by choosing one model lesson that represents most of its curriculum, writes a visual style guide and a uniform approach, turns the book's text into an instructional script, then produces in small batches, each reviewed before the next. This comprehensive guide is for schools and platforms that want to turn a curriculum, or part of one, into visual content. It is the parent of other guides of ours: [turning a curriculum into animation](/en/blogs/transforming-educational-curricula-into-animation-innovative-solutions-for-digitization-challenges) for the steps of a single lesson, [AI in curriculum digitisation](/en/blogs/smart-integration-how-ai-can-enhance-curriculum-digitization) for the role of automated tools, and [budgeting a content library](/en/blogs/understanding-motion-graphics-video-pricing) for the cost.

### 📊 Digitising the curriculum: four points - 🎯 **Priority to the hardest:** Start with the lessons hardest for students, not the easiest for the production team. - 📝 **A book is not a script:** A book's language is read, a video's is heard and seen, so re-engineer the lesson. - 🧱 **One style guide and assets:** A character, colours and templates designed once serve every lesson. - 🔁 **Small batches:** A model lesson first, then batches each reviewed before the next.

What does digitising a curriculum really mean? ----------------------------------------------

Level	What happens	Verdict
A digital copy	The same book as a PDF or web pages	Storage, not digitisation, and it does not change the student's experience
A recorded teacher	A video of a teacher explaining to a camera	Useful, but attention fades if the explanation was not built to be watched
A screen walkthrough	Slides or a digital board with a voice	Suits procedures and solving problems
Animated content	Animation or animated diagrams explaining the idea	Suits what cannot be seen, stories and relations between parts
An interactive experience	Video with questions and tracked results	The strongest for practice, and needs a platform that supports it

The best is usually a mix: convert the lessons where animated content makes a difference, and leave the rest to a recording or an improved walkthrough. Converting the whole curriculum into animation is costly and unnecessary, and the opposite, merely copying books, changes nothing. Why is it not enough to give the book to an editor? --------------------------------------------------- The biggest mistake in digitisation is handing the textbook to a technician and asking them to “turn it into video”. The language of books is academic and written; the language of video is simple visual dialogue that can be drawn and animated. Reading a page as it is to a camera loses the student's focus fast, not because the content is weak but because the medium is wrong. Real digitisation starts by re-engineering the lesson: what is the core idea? What is hard to picture and needs a drawing? What can be cut? The detail is in [instructional scriptwriting](/en/blogs/instructional-scriptwriting). Where do you start? Six steps ----------------------------- 1. **Collect the hard lessons:** from teachers' notes and test errors, and rank them by what later lessons build on. 2. **Choose the “model lesson”:** one lesson that represents the dominant kind in your curriculum. Producing it first reveals the challenges and settles the style before you commit to the whole curriculum. 3. **Build the style guide and asset library:** the character or characters, colours, fonts and templates for repeated scenes (explanation, comparison, timeline, lab). They are designed once and serve every lesson, and they make the library consistent and economical. 4. **Write the instructional script, not the academic text:** one idea per clip, opening with a question or situation, then presenting the idea clearly and closing with a summary. 5. **Produce in batches:** once the model lesson and the library are approved, lessons are produced in groups on a clear schedule, and each batch is reviewed before the one after it. 6. **Measure, then expand:** completion and answers to questions tell you whether to continue with the same style. Do not move from the model lesson to large-scale production before teachers and students from the target grade have seen it. For the questions that review each clip before release, read [visual educational content for schools](/en/blogs/how-to-effectively-produce-visual-educational-content-for-schools). What is the difference between motion graphics and hand-drawn animation in education? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Format	Suits	Limits
Motion graphics	Abstract concepts, data and processes (mathematics, economics)	Less connected to story and character
Hand-drawn animation	Narrative, stories and subjects that need characters (history, language, values)	Takes longer and needs checking scene by scene
A mix	A curriculum with varied subjects	Needs a style guide to unify the look

Common mistakes in digitising a curriculum ------------------------------------------ - **Digitising everything at once:** you spend a large budget before you are sure of the style. Start with one unit. - **Changing the style between batches:** the library seems to come from several parties. Hold to the guide. - **Skipping the teacher's review:** a wrong fact appears after release. Make review a condition. - **One long clip for a whole lesson:** students leave halfway. Split it into clips with one idea each. - **Not owning the source files:** so you cannot update the lesson later without producing it again. - **Measuring liking, not understanding:** so ask short questions about the concept after the clip. Suppose a school decides to digitise the electricity unit for one grade. It starts with the list of concepts students get wrong every year, picks the closed-circuit lesson as the model lesson, writes it a one-clip script, produces a version, and shows it to teachers and students before deciding on the rest of the unit. This is a hypothetical example to show the method, not something that happened. How we work on educational projects ----------------------------------- Hawadet Studio is an early-stage Arabic animation studio, and we show our own original work for you to judge. Our educational series “Grandma's Tales – Knowledge Through Learning” is 2D, fully hand-drawn, and tells the stories of scholars and historical figures to children. Our path is the same in everything we make: a one-idea summary, a script, a character bible, storyboards, an animatic to settle the rhythm, then hand-drawn animation, human voice recording, editing and mixing, with staged reviews under a flexible revision policy within a scope agreed in advance. The biggest mistake that forced us to redo work was rushing the foundation steps to save time, so we advise giving the writing and planning stage its time before any animation. Our work is on the [projects page](/en/projects). Frequently Asked Questions -------------------------- ### Should we digitise the whole curriculum at once? No. Start with one subject or unit, measure its effect on students, then expand. Full digitisation at once means a huge budget before you are sure of the style. ### What is the difference between motion graphics and hand-drawn animation? Motion graphics suit abstract concepts, data and processes; hand-drawn animation suits narrative, stories and subjects that need characters. Many curricula mix the two. ### Do we own the content after production? This is a clause written into the contract before the work starts: who owns the lessons, the library and the source files. Require delivery of the source files so you can update and expand later.

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#### Hawadet Studio Team 2D & 3D Animation Production Studio The Hawadet team is an animation production studio, working in hand-drawn 2D and cinematic 3D, specialising in children's content, educational animation, and original IP development for broadcasters and streaming platforms. These articles explain the production pipeline, from concept to delivery.

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