All of our courses that have At-Your-Own-Pace in their titles (many of the science courses do and some of the math courses as well) enroll year-round. Instead of meeting live in the online classroom, the presentations are recorded for playback at a time that is convenient for you. To enroll, go to the Moodle site and log in with account you want to have in the course. Go to http://www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.com/course/ and click on the course title you are interested in. Read over the course description to be sure that you have the needed resources and meet course enrollment per-requisites. If all is a go, look for the self-enrollment key near the top of the course description. Enter the code in the input box at the bottom. Once in the course, look for the course FAQs and/or other orientation resources to get you up and going in that specific course.

Contact information: Tammy Moore at armoorefam@centurytel,net
Apologia Biology is a high school level general biology course that has always been tremendously popular with home school families and local co-ops. Our live, online classroom course has a rolling admissions design which allows students to jump in to the course at any time of the year. If we are at module 11, for instance, the student can join in and wrap around with the class back to module 1 right after module 16 to graduate in the module just before where they started. The design works so well because most of the modules stand on their own. There is a short stretch from module 6 through 8 where the modules do build one upon the other and we temporarily stop taking students unless they are willing to use the recorded lectures to catch up.

We typically cover one module every two weeks with the first week being oriented toward lecture content and the second week covering labs and study time. Lab days help students to know how to do their labs at home. The labs are done via slide image, webcam, live classroom activities, and sometimes virtual labs. On lab days where the labs don't need much time, we do biomysteries. The students love these. They get caught up in the story and work together as a class to solve the mystery. These give me a chance to let them experience the real world problem solving, tools, and environments where investigators and scientists work. Wednesday of the second week is game day. The students divide up into two teams and they compete to see which team can get the most module questions correct. It is a fun way to encourage students to study. The last day of the module is quiet study day in which they use a specially designed set of slides to prepare for the module exam.

The live online classes are tremendously popular and will start taking enrollments on August 1st. The children of volunteers and donating families do get an early announcement a week or two ahead of the general public in thanks for doing what they can to keep our mission of free classes with no obligations to co-teach alive and well. To get a feel for what is around the corner as far as classes go, click on the Courses tab in the menu and look through the sub-menus at what we have in the works.