These application programming interfaces (APIs) are all the rage these days. We hear about them in online commerce, social media, and now they are flooding the world of education and online learning. So what are they exactly? An API is a way for websites, programmers, and applications to communicate with each other, exchanging information. If I have a database with information that I would like to disseminate then I can develop an API and make that accessible to the world. External developers can then create APIs with the purpose of communicating with my API, and thus extract the information that I am making public. It's similar to the notion of "my people will contact your people and we'll make this happen". Only the people in mention is actually a software-to-software exchange. Why APIs are important APIs are a way to access information or databases which would otherwise be inaccessible. For example, my database might be protected by a firewall, wherea