Apex Learning: A Comprehensive Definition and Exploration
The term "apex" generally refers to the highest point or peak of something. However, the definition of "Apex Learning" extends far beyond this simple concept. Apex Learning is an accredited online private school that provides comprehensive learning options for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. This article aims to provide a detailed exploration of Apex Learning, its history, its offerings, and its unique educational approach.
What is Apex Learning?
Apex Learning is not just a point or vertex that is the highest or uppermost part of something. It is an accredited online private school providing full- and part-time learning options to help K-12 students achieve their academic goals. Apex Learning is accredited by Cognia and WASC, which allows students to earn transferable course credits or high school diplomas. The catalog consists of over 200 core, honors, AP®, elective, world language, career and technical education, and NCAA®-approved courses.
A Brief History of Apex Learning
In 1997, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen created Apex Learning to deliver online Advanced Placement courses to students in rural areas. This initial focus on providing access to advanced coursework for underserved students laid the foundation for Apex Learning's growth into a comprehensive online education provider. Over time, Apex Learning expanded its offerings to include a larger catalog of courses and tutorials for students in grades 6-12 and a full-time program for grades K-12.
The Apex Learning Curriculum
The Apex Learning curriculum is designed to provide students with a deep understanding of various subjects while fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Apex Learning's science courses offer students a deep understanding of the natural world and the universe through hands-on learning opportunities. Students will explore the intricacies of the universe; uncover the secrets of space and time; and discover the wonders of biology, chemistry, and physics. The courses deepen students' understanding of the scientific method, encourage critical thinking, and bring science to life. Students will learn to ask scientific questions, form and test hypotheses, and use logic and evidence to draw conclusions about the concepts covered. The catalog consists of over 200 core, honors, AP®, elective, world language, career and technical education, and NCAA®-approved courses.
The Apex Learning Experience
Students enrolled full-time at Apex Learning get the flexibility of online learning while receiving support from experienced teachers. Students enroll in Apex Learning Courses and Tutorials to earn credits toward graduation requirements, improve a grade, accelerate their progress, gain confidence in a particular subject, or prepare for the SAT® or ACT® exam.
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Apex Learning and the Importance of Integration
Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child’s experience; cease thinking of the child’s experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facets and truths of studies define instruction. Student learning in the APEX program is characterized by interaction in small groups, freedom to make important educational choices, exposure to curricular content through an integrated set of experiences, and evaluation in terms of defined areas of competence and performance.
APEX at UVM: A Case Study in Child-Centered Education
For most of sixteen years at UVM, Frank Watson and I, with the help of many colleagues, ran a primary grades specialization program in elementary teacher education. That program was APEX. The American Primary Experience Program, a name deliberately chosen to mirror the phrase, British Primary Schools. Apex started because Dean Corrigan said, “Do it.” Apex was born the day he erased from a portable office chalkboard one of two new program possibilities during a college planning meeting in his office. The possibility that was left was us. With chalk dust fresh in the air, two possibilities became one reality. Multiage classrooms were on the rise in Vermont. I believed UVM needed a teacher education program that emulated the successful practices of the British Infant Schools. Fledgling teachers needed to be taught how to teach in those very child-centered ways. Conventional teacher education courses were not about preparing students to teach in active, child centered, interest driven rooms filled with children of heterogeneous learning abilities. Learning about how children learn was relegated to a course, not a program. It would do no good to read others’ stories about how these classrooms worked. We needed to follow Dewey’s example in The Child and The Curriculum and integrate learning theory (child study) and school curriculum (subject matter study) into a way of teaching that included subject matter AND child study. And we needed to do this work in schools with real children as much as we could so that feedback about our efforts was authentic and personal and direct and real. Right from the source.
The APEX Learning Environment: Fostering Collaboration and Growth
Twenty-one third year students sit in a circle facing each other. The room is our teaching room, just off our suite of offices in UVM’s newly opened Living Learning Center. A large loft dominates a corner of the room, space for two or three students to sit and read above, pillow space below. The loft is constructed of discarded barn rafters and grayish barn wood. The cinder block wall on the door side of the room shines with the mural of a stream, a giant tree, and a warm, red-orangy yellow sun shining down on us all. The student group is typified most by longish and straight hair, flannel shirts, a variety of Birkenstocks or L. L. Bean boots, and denim jeans, skirts, shirts, whatever. Three of the students have brought their dogs with them and over these early days of the semester, the dogs have finally become comfortable with each other. Our space feels crowded when we are arranged as we are. But the circle is important. Everyone has to have an equal say in the decisions we make and the circle emphasizes the equality of relationships and responsibilities we are trying to promote. The group has a laid back intensity as it digs into the same discussion we’ve been having during our afternoon meeting time for over three days now. This is the fourth day, and our eighth classroom meeting.
Student Empowerment and Shared Responsibility in APEX
Dawn speaks. She’s a bit older. She’s done alternative service before coming into Apex, and she understands how to use power better than most students in the circle. It probably doesn’t hurt that she’s grown up around power discussions. Her Dad is President of the University. “Yesterday, we finally got serious on this grading issue. We clarified with Frank and Charlie that this discussion is about influence, not just input. If they are serious about wanting to share the responsibility for grading our courses with us, then we have to be clear about what we want. What I’ve got here is a grading proposal that several of us worked on last night. The document she distributes proposes that every course taught within Apex be graded on a Pass/Fail basis. And though the document stops short of recommending that students assign their own grades, students have significant input into the grading process. Frank and I had been thinking about the power relationships that grading sets up when professors design course requirements, grading criteria, and then go ahead and award grades based on their own assessment of student work. It seemed to us that were we to go down the usual university route with the students in this unusual program, then we would be eliminating one more necessity for students to have to think about what they wanted to accomplish, how they wanted to accomplish it, and on what basis they wanted to hold themselves accountable for both the quality and quantity of their work. It seemed to us that these were important issues for teachers-to-be to consider, and once more, they were important issues for teachers to have their students of whatever age consider. What better way to prepare teachers to deal with this complicated relationship between content expertise, individual ownership, and locus of control than to give our students the power to work a policy change. We told them we’d do whatever we could to support their decision. We could not promise that we’d be successful.
Addressing Student Concerns and Preparing for the Future
Carrie speaks. “Dawn, I really appreciate the work that you and Doug and Jim and Susie have done here. It’s an amazing piece of work. But I’m worried about the issue of getting a job or going on to graduate school.” Carrie’s face mirrors concern. Her straight black hair sweeps down around an almost angelic face. She is a deep thinker and the idea of moving to a P/F grading scheme has her struggling with a side of her she didn’t know so well. In my office yesterday, she talked about how she’d always led her life to do the right things. Carrie was a devout Christian and she was quite open about her love of Christ and His way. She liked the freedom and responsibility that was promoted by upcoming proposal, but she was deeply worried that what she might do would not be somehow acceptable. This whole discussion had opened her eyes to just how dependent she was on other systems of authority for her own personal confirmation and she wasn’t so sure she liked that. On the other hand, she wanted to go on with her study after Apex. She wanted to be trained as a speech pathologist and she was worried that graduate schools would consider her a graduate of a flakey program with all those passing grades on her transcript. She worried that we were making a decision that would disadvantage her for her next round of education. “How can we do what we think is right here and not hurt ourselves if we want to go on for more education? How can we know that principals won’t pass us over if they don’t see and “A” under student teaching? What the group was realizing, of course, is that they were moving to a place of uncertainty about the effect of present action on future employability. The principals they’d talked to were split on the issue of grades vs. pass/fail. Some said they didn’t care about grades at all. They wanted to see what a person could do. Others said they used grades as a first cut through the piles of resumes they received.
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Experiential Learning: The Apex Paper Airplane Extravaganza
We were way too rowdy. Several times, people had stopped by to watch and laugh with us. I bet if we had run a betting booth, we’d have done quite well. It was the annual Apex Paper Airplane Extravaganza. Six teams of four students spent the morning reading about Bernoulli’s principle, studying different paper airplane designs, thinking about lift and drag, and designing and testing their own candidates for the Plane Of The Day Award. Each team had to come up with one airplane, one plane, ready to go, one plane ready to be judged in three different categories: aesthetics, time aloft, and distance traveled. The planes had to be made of paper, no tape or paper clips or other accoutrements could be added to them. This was to be pure paper, pure design, pure fun. We trekked to C-Building of Living Learning Center. As usual, whenever we did one of these whole-group participatory learning experiences, we were not calm about it. We attracted lots of attention. Hank was elected MC. MC Hank. He got the group organized as best he could. Richie was more excited than usual. His very red face made me wonder if he’d been engaged in pursuits beyond paper airplane construction but he wasn’t hurting anyone and was in fact really into the task at hand. Sarah had taken over her group. She’d just put Richie in his place, as a matter of fact, when he tried to move forward of the start line. We had two-person measurement and timer teams (accomplishing an introduction to “what is an average” at the same time), and faculty were asked to serve as arbiters of “aesthetics.” Posters covered the walls boasting the prowess of certain airplanes. This evidenced a recent study of writing genres, in this case a transformation of persuasive essaying into persuasive visual advertising. Most likely, the circus posters triggered the advertising.
Moments of Magic and Reflection
When it was Sarah’s turn, she effortlessly lays her group’s airplane out onto the air. She releases it with a delicate flick of her first three fingers. Such a gentle move. The delta wing entry takes off as if it has a life of its own. It actually rises as if to catch a current and then slowly descends. It’s a real question whether or not it will hit the far wall before finishing its flight. Some in the group stand transfixed, gaping at the almost alive flight. Others hoot and holler as if to add their air to its lofting, or cause it to come crashing down on the turbulence of the sound - depending on your orientation to “team.” It is a somewhat magical moment in a jam-packed day. I look at Frank and he looks at me. We are both frustrated and fine about these passing moments. The silent thoughts that pass between us are one and the same. How are we to going to milk this experience for all its worth? Like much that we do, there is good science content here, there are lessons to be learned in the interpersonal dynamics, and taking apart the organization of this sixty-minute activity is a class in itself. To say nothing about how to assess these direct, hands-on, student-centered experiences. We’ve kept good data on the flight aspects of the activity. Will we have time to bring it back to Bernoulli? Can we spend some moments listing all the different abilities were needed for each group to do this flight activity well? We could take tomorrow, advance what we’d planned for that day, and spend the day deconstructing this contest. We could do that. But we’ve done that way too much already this semester and the days left are far fewer than all the good ideas we have left to bring forward. Sarah stands there, the backs of her hands on her hips, head tilted, adding the last little bit of body English to ease the plane’s decent. She then turns to no one in particular and says, “See? Who says girls don’t know anything about flight? I guess we showed ‘em.” People laugh at her and with her. Sarah’s plane finally slows enough to lose lift and ungraciously plops to the floor. People applaud. The measurement and timer teams get on with their work, do their calculations, and announce a new leader in both categories, for the moment anyway.
Community and Collaboration: Planning for the Future
We are at Frank’s house, again. It has been a snowy afternoon. Most of the students have made it out to Poker Hill Road, most of them have brought their skis, and all have had a delightful time away from UVM. Frank and Anne’s property is cross-country heaven. Joe Abruscato, another staff member, cooks his famous sausage and peppers. Frank has made a soup, and I’ve brought a lasagna. Others have gone in on soups, dips, breads, bean dishes, and assorted sweets. There’s no lack of food, that’s for sure. Frank has the fireplace warming us all. His wife Anne move easily through the crowded room saying “Hello” to many students by name. Besides an afternoon away from Burlington, the purpose of our getting together is to plan the outlines of next semester’s work. There has been talk of wanting to leave campus to spend a week or two working with teachers and children in the far North of Vermont, a small elementary school in Berkshire, VT. We’ve heard through a teacher contact that some of the faculty from Berkshire would “just love to have some students come and spend time with their students”. They also could use some assistance designing and constructing a nature trail through the woods behind their school. Would we be interested? This evening is to lay out preliminary plans for how we might go about this. We’ve done it before. We face a lot of work. Ann, a different Ann, an Apex student in her final semester at UVM, has taken on some of the responsibility to get this organized. With a bit of help from some of her peers, she’s visited the school, talked with the principal, Ray, and had discussions with some of the teachers. As is usual in these situations, some teachers will be overjoyed to have us come; others will see us as an annoying intrusion. Frank’s living room feels way too warm to do any serious planning and people are worn out from the afternoon’s exertions but we rouse ourselves as Ann begins to lay out the possibilities. “Berkshire is a small school. Ray is very nice and very helpful and he really wants this to happen. We talked and he thinks he has maybe six teachers who would work with us. He introduced me to Tom. He’s the sixth grade science teacher whose idea the nature trail is. We looked at the probable site. He knows where he wants it to go but there’s trailwork that must be done. It’s wet in some areas. It needs some logged footpaths and perhaps even a bridge over one portion of the stream. And Ray isn’t sure he has enough teachers for all of us. We may have to think about another school, like Enosburg, maybe. This is getting a little more than I can handle. I need some help.” Frank sits there next to the fire, cross-legged, rubbing his bearded chin, head tilted back, listening. He never says, “No.” I honestly wonder what he’s going to say about this one. We control all our student’s education coursework time but they still have to take courses in the larger university. Our university colleagues are a varied lot when it comes to understanding why students might miss a few classes. Especially non-athletes. Educat…
Apex as a Programming Language: A Technical Perspective
Before You BeginWe're excited to accompany you on your Apex adventure. While this module covers basic information about the programming language, it also goes deep, quickly. If this module is your first exposure to Apex, we highly recommend that you first go through the Quick Start: Apex project. What is Apex?Apex is a programming language that uses Java-like syntax and acts like database stored procedures. Integrated with the database-It is straightforward to access and manipulate records. Easy to test-Apex provides built-in support for unit test creation, execution, and code coverage. You can write and debug Apex on your client computer using the Salesforce Extensions for Visual Studio Code. You can also write Apex and access debugging information directly in the browser by using the Salesforce user interface. The following two declarations are equivalent. String[] colors = new List
Code Reusability and Debugging in Apex
Apex ClassesOne of the benefits of Apex classes is code reuse. Class methods can be called by triggers and other classes. Also, this class has a private helper method (inspectResults()), which can’t be called externally because it is private but is used only within the class. Click File | Save to save your class.NOTE: If your code isn’t syntactically correct, an error shows up in the Problems tab. Let’s invoke the public method. We’ll use anonymous Apex execution to do so. Anonymous Apex allows you to run lines of code on the fly and is a handy way to invoke Apex, especially to test out functionality. In the window that opens, enter the following. Debug logs are useful for debugging your code. When Apex methods execute, the calls are logged in the debug log. Also, you can write your own debug messages to the log, which helps in debugging your code in case there are errors. Select Debug Only to filter the log so that only log lines for System.debug() statements are shown. Let’s change it to a static method by adding the static keyword to its declaration.
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Apex Learning's Mission and Impact
Apex was love. Apex was dedication. Apex was engagement. Apex was about finding out who you were. Apex was about connection. Apex was about mattering. Apex Learning is an accredited,[1] online private school providing full- and part-time learning options[2] to help K-12 students achieve their academic goals. Apex Learning is accredited by Cognia and WASC, which allows students to earn transferable course credits or high school diplomas.
Apex in Everyday Language
An apex is a point or vertex that is the highest or uppermost part of something. It is the top or highest point of a structure or object, and is often used to describe the peak or highest point of a mountain, hill, or other natural feature. There are many different ways in which the term apex can be used and understood, and it is often used in a variety of different contexts. What is an apex? a. The highest point or peak of a mountain, hill, or other natural feature b. The highest or most important point or position in a particular field or area of study c. The top or highest point of a structure or object d. What is the apex of Mount Everest? a. The highest point on Earth b. The highest point in the United States c. The highest point in Asia d. Where is the apex located on a pyramid? a. The base of the pyramid b. The middle of the pyramid c. The top of the pyramid, where the sides meet d. What is the apex of a career? a. The beginning of a career b. The middle of a career c. The end of a career d. What is the apex of a wave? a. The lowest point of the wave as it travels through the water b. The highest point of the wave as it travels through the water c. The middle point of the wave as it travels through the water d. What is the apex of a leaf? a. The point at the bottom of the leaf where the stem connects b. The point at the top of the leaf where the stem connects c. The point at the middle of the leaf where the stem connects d. What is the highest point on Earth? a. The apex of Mount Everest b. The apex of Mount Kilimanjaro c. The apex of Mount Fuji d.
Student Success Stories and Testimonials
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