A better database management system, for teaching databases
At the state college I work for we stopped teaching Access as the "intro to databases" class a while ago.  I taught the class this term using MySQL and MySQL Workbench.  We had it installed on our lab machines (windows) and I also provided a VirtualBox VM with a Linux desktop, the MySQL server, the Workbench program, and a few other goodies.  

Since I ended up with 2 extra class periods after the content was all delivered, I spent a little time showing different ways of interacting with the mysql server (command line, phpMyAdmin, code interaction via PHP and Java) as well as the mysql server management from the Linux class I teach.

Our progression in our AS degree track - 

Intro to SQL - all inserts, updates, selects, joins, transactions, views, stored procedures.  Nothing on creating tables - just working with existing databases and tables.

Databases 2 - all table structure and relationships, referencing back to Intro class constantly.

second semester programming classes (C++ or Java) get into workign with a database from a programming language.

For our batchelors program, there is more use of programming and databases, with students learning MongoDB.  The batchelors level programming classes all use database connectivity, although with the Android class we move from mysql or mongo to sqlite.