Final Thoughts From NECC

Greetings Friends of Apangea;

 

NECC was a great conference!

 

After much preparation all day Sunday, we were ready to go. Monday morning Apangea Learning unveiled its new booth setup: multiple demonstration stations; a stage and microphone for presenting on a big screen and an emotionally powerful video featuring our customers.

 

But the biggest highlight with our new booth: we had some wonderful students from one of our clients, East Central ISD, join us at the booth.  Visitors enjoyed watching them work on the system; it provided a unique opportunity to see the product in action.

 

 

 

It was an incredibly busy two days – but what a great two days! Both days, we had a steady stream of visitors. It was wonderful to not only have our current customers, such as Damon Jasso from the Houston Independent School District, stop by to say hello, but to also meet so many new people.

 

 

 

Thanks to everyone who took the time to stop by our booth. But I want to send out a BIG thanks to our young friends from East Central ISD – you were awesome!

 

 

I hope to see everyone at TASA/TASB and T+L

~ Matthew Hausmann, Vice President ~

A Day to Celebrate: National Apangea Day!

Happy National Apangea Day!

We at Apangea Learning are very excited to celebrate our first National Apangea Day!

We have asked all our Apangeans’ to show their Apangea spirit by wearing blue and green today!

What would National Apangea Day be without some fun facts about Apangea Learning?

(Current School Year)

• 924,793 – Number of math problems completed by Apangea Learning students
• 30 – Number of iPods given away
• 1,097 – Number of gift cards redeemed

Thank you for showing your Apangea spirit today! Go Blue and Green!

Happy National Apangea Day!

Altruism: a true motivator

al·tru·ism   [al-troo-iz-uh m] –noun

 

1. The principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others

 

It is relatively easy to motivate someone with a dangling carrot if that carrot directly benefits them. However, would that same person be as motivated if that carrot only benefited another? In the end, the answer comes down to the individual. But, we were happy to discover that as a whole, today’s students (tomorrow’s leaders) truly have an altruistic spirit about them.

 

During the winter holiday, Apangea Learning held a national contest to encourage students to use SmartHelp over the winter break. Unlike previous contests, this contest did not have students competing one-on-one for prizes such as iPods and Nintendo DS Lite. Instead, it had a new twist: altruism.

 

During this season of traditional goodwill and giving, students would now work together as a class to compete against other classes not for gadgets or pizza parties, but for the opportunity to help complete strangers. Apangea Learning would donate $1,000 to the charity of the winning class’ choice.

 

The participation in this contest was phenomenal.

 

Since that contest, Apangea Learning has held additional altruism contests that yielded equally impressive student participation.  Winners of these contests (and the charities they chose) include:

 

• Bill Arnold Middle School (TX): Leukemia and Lymphoma Society North Dallas Chapter
• North Kenwood/Oakland Middle Campus of the University of Chicago Charter School (IL): Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
• Southeast Local Middle School (OH): Akron Children’s Hospital 

The students altruistic spirit did not go unnoticed. Click the following links to view a few of the stories that ran as a result of the students’ efforts: 

• Hyde Park Citizen: North Kenwood-Oakland Charter School Donates Contest Proceeds to Homeless Group
• KDAF Dallas/Fort Worth -CW 33 News at Nine: Arnold Middle School Donates to Charity
• Record-Courier: Celebrating math achievements; Program raising test scores; $1,000 donated to hospital

A Student Makes My Day

“I really like math thanks to Apangea Learning.”  ~ Apangea Learning Student

Every once in a while, something shows up in my email that makes a real impact on me.  This is one of those days.  What I like about what this student said is that it really strips away everything that we try to do as a company and boils it down to a simple, yet completely powerful statement.  So thank you, Michael, for putting a smile on my face and making my day.

~ MATT HAUSMANN, Vice President ~

Let the Teachers Teach

Lately, we have been considering the following question:  what does Apangea Learning SmartHelp really do in the classroom?  And, I don’t mean this in a tactical sense, but in more of a philosophical sense.  As is so often the case, the answer came from one of our customers, Barbara Shoap, a teacher at George Washington High School in Philadelphia. 

“Some of us remain committed to give disadvantaged students some much-needed skills and some direction. It’s an uphill battle and it’s burn-out. There are always some kids who resist change or refuse help. But Apangea Learning PLUS my support kept them attending, engaged, and progressing, commensurate with the effort that they made to apply themselves within the program. I think that is a realistic definition of success. I was able to be more available to their individual needs, and my relationship to them was both teacher and facilitator.  Apangea Learning made my day better every day.” 

That simple, yet powerful paragraph provided us with the answer we were looking for:  Apangea Learning lets the teachers teach.  And, the more we thought about it, the more we realized that the reasons that people become teachers is for those special moments when they are able to interact with a student and help that child learn.  But, in these days of crowded classrooms, diverse student populations, and high stakes exams, we ask our teachers to do more and more with less and less.  Our job as businesspeople, as parents, as citizens of society as a whole is to help the teachers do what we want them to do and what they want to do:  teach.  And, that’s why we say: LET THE TEACHERS TEACH!

Raise Your Hand Texas

I recently had the opportunity to exhibit at the TASB/TASA Convention in Dallas.  As is usual at trade shows, I made my “new best friends in the world”… the people in the booths that were located close to my booth.  I had the pleasure of being next to a booth for Raise Your Hand Texas (www.raiseyourhandtexas.org).  This organization really captured my attention:  it is a not-for-profit, bipartisan advocacy group dedicated to supporting public schools in Texas. The people that I met from the organization truly have the best interest of kids and communities at heart. 

It is unfortunate that across the United States budget battles are being waged over how much money schools should receive and where it should come from (e.g., property taxes.). It is my hope that all people involved in these battles can gain insight from Raise Your Hand Texas and not lose sight of one very important goal:  providing kids with an excellent education that will allow them to achieve their life goals.  In doing so, I firmly believe that we are making not only for better communities, but for a better country as a whole. 

~ Matthew Hausmann, Vice President ~

Apangea Learning Continues to Take Urban School Districts by Storm

Apangea Learning, a leading provider of cost-effective differentiated math instruction, continues to build upon its successes in large urban settings throughout the United States with the implementation of SmartHelp in the Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Chicago Public Schools this fall.

 “Apangea Learning SmartHelp has been very successful in instructing students in large urban schools in New York City, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh to master fundamental and advanced math concepts, develop problem solving skills, and dramatically improve their performance on high stakes exams,” explained Apangea Learning CEO Louis Piconi. “SmartHelp’s multilingual capabilities, coupled with its three-tiered instructional escalation model, will provide Atlanta, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Public Schools an amazing resource to help meet their students’ individual needs.”  

The Office of Extended Education Programs (EEP), headed by Dr. Esther Monclova-Johnson, is an initiative of Academic Services in the Differentiated Learning Division of the Washington, D.C. Public Schools. SmartHelp will be implemented in one of the EEP’s largest after school programs, the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers, which provides students with academic intervention, support and enrichment. One of the primary goals of the SmartHelp program is to provide D.C. Public School students both content mastery and academic math proficiency.

Atlanta Public Schools will implement SmartHelp primarily in its middle schools for a 1,600 student program. This program will help those students struggling to master fundamental math skills and begin to instruct them in more advanced math concepts.

Chicago Public School sixth grade classes will be the first recipients of Apangea Learning SmartHelp this month with plans to expand further through the middle grades. SmartHelp will be integrated to directly meet the needs of each teacher’s overall math curriculum to provide differentiated learning.

Apangea Learning has been very well received by administrators, teachers and students.

“SmartHelp, plus my support, kept my students attending, engaged, and progressing. Many of the students made significant strides that they would not have made if the program had not been there for intervention support,” explained Barbara Shoap of the Philadelphia School District. “SmartHelp enabled me to be more available to my students’ individual learning needs. It made my day better, every day.”

 ~ Matthew Hausmann, Vice President ~

APANGEA LEARNING ANNOUNCES FIRST ANNUAL INTERN AWARD

Shane Sewall is the first recipient to win the First Annual Apangea Learning Intern Award. He was an intern for Apangea Learning during his senior year at Northside Urban Pathways Charter School (NUP) for the 2006-2007 school year. Today, he is a freshman at Kent State University and is the first and only of his family or friends to attend college.

 “Being the CEO of a high growth company, I am very aware of how important each employee, including our interns, is to the over all success of Apangea Learning,” explained Apangea Learning CEO Louis Piconi.  “Shane is a very hardworking and extremely dedicated young man. There was no doubt that he should be the recipient for our First Annual Apangea Learning Intern Award.” 

Headquartered in downtown Pittsburgh, Apangea Learning’s internship program exclusively recruits from inner-city high schools. This program is designed to expose urban youths to a business environment in hopes that this experience creates a bridge that leads them from high school to college and beyond.  

“Many students growing up in an urban environment face numerous challenges on a daily basis that most of us in the business world can’t begin to comprehend,” expressed Piconi. “Our internship program helps these kids understand why it so important to continue their education and how it will vastly expand the opportunities they have in life.” 

~ Matthew Hausmann, Vice President ~

Pittsburgh Innovates

As featured in the September 19, 2007 edition of Pop City. 

Apangea Learning will launch new writing product; hires 10

Apangea Learning, the Pittsburgh company offering online differentiated math tutoring for students, will launch an innovative new writing product next January and has announced the hiring of 10 additional employees this year. The writing software, still in the development stage,  will operate similarly to Apangea’s flagship math product, SmartHelp, helping students to develop writing and literacy skills through software and on-demand teachers, says CEO Louis Piconi.

Since March Apangea has added staff in the areas of sales, service, account management, and service teams that work with the schools, increasing its size by 25 percent and bringing the total number of employees in its downtown office to 28 full-time and 5 part-time, Piconi says. Apangea, with revenues of $1.4 million this year, tutors 50,000 students in math in 18 states.

Apangea also has established a school district partnership program that offers unlimited tutoring to parents for $100 a year while giving districts $25 back for each student. This is a substantial savings to parents who often pay upward of $40 an hour for a math tutor, Piconi says. “It’s our mission at Apangea to find a way to make tutoring available to everyone who needs it,” says Piconi. “Parents who hire tutors are paying a really big bill. We want to give them the option to purchase high quality tutoring at an affordable price.”

To view Pop City’s story on Pittsburgh’s successful software tutoring companies, click here.

Writer: Deb Smit

Source: Louis Piconi, Brian Wallace, Apangea Learning

SmartGrowth

There are a lot of new faces here at Apangea Learning!

Over the past few months, the company has been strategically growing our account services, sales and academic tutoring departments. As a result, the company has grown its staff by more then 20 percent.

 Academic Tutoring Department 

Mary Frances Thorn, P.E. was hired as a SmartHelp faculty tutor, where she will provide live online tutoring via Flash Communications and develop advanced math content for SmartHelp.

Previously, Thorn was a junior high mathematics and science teacher for a Diocese of Pittsburgh Catholic School. She was also a senior engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Thorn has both her Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and her Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. She also holds a Master of Education from Duquesne University.

 Account Services Department 

Arthur Allen and Christine Nass were both hired as account managers and will be responsible for client services and onsite/online training.

Previous to joining Apangea Learning, Allen was a Pennsylvania-certified mathematics teacher at City Charter High School, Schenley High School and Neighborhood Academy. He has a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh and is a graduate of the Teacher Education Program at Duquesne University.

Most recently, Nass was an account representative at Thomson West. She has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Robert Morris University, a MBA from Duquesne University and her JD from Duquesne Law School.    

 Sales Department 

Kevin Parent and Mark Stefanik were both hired as sales executives.

Parent’s sales territory includes the Midwest region. Previous to joining Apangea Learning, he was an assistant director of admissions with Education Management Corporation. Parent has both his Bachelor of Science in Education and a Master of Science in Education (Behavioral Science) from Duquesne University.

Stefanik is responsible for growing California as a new territory for the company. Most recently, Stefanik was the territory business manager for PT Marketing Group. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Pittsburgh. He achieved the Gold Belt from Sandler Sales Institute.

 ~ Matthew Hausmann, Vice President ~