Accounting Curriculum

Does anyone among my readers have a great idea about how a high school accounting class should be taught?

We need to order new curriculum materials for next year, and are struggling to know what to order. Here are some of the challenges:

1. How do we cover both handwritten accounting and electronic accounting procedures without overloading everyone?

2. Should we consider a business records course rather than an accounting course?

3. Should we stick with generalized automated accounting material, or narrow it down to one specific program like Peachtree, Excel, or QuickBooks?

4. How do we keep it affordable?--site licenses for software--support materials, consumables, textbooks, etc. To get set up next year with one supplier we're considering (Thomson Southwestern) would cost a minimum of $300 for the teacher's materials, and about $100 for each student. The site license will probably cost from $400 to $900.

5. Which system is better--multicolumn or general journal?

I would be glad to hear either from people in business or education. Students too are welcome to weigh in.