 Hi, I'm Tracy Takahame of Spinoza and this is a video about Connections, the Learning Sciences Platform. Here at Connections we offer professional developments in a unique format with research-based content. We're different from other teacher training programs both in how we design your learning experiences and in what you learn. This sets us apart in six important ways. First, over the past 25 years of experience, we've found that the best teacher education programs are authentic and immediately applicable in the classroom settings. This means that there's a balance of theory with usable knowledge. Teachers today need many more competencies than they did in the past and this leads us to a second way that we differ. We found that approaching learning in a more holistic way and with a transdisciplinary vision is much more efficient. This is why we join Mind, Brain and Education Science with research on teacher education to come up with a very powerful intervention. The OECD's 2017 publication on pedagogical knowledge and the changing nature of the teaching profession echoes this need to revamp teacher education. This leads to a third way that we differ from others in the field. We believe in presenting information in a logical order. This means putting this vast amount of teachers' new pedagogical knowledge into a hierarchy of ideas. This unique design permits teacher colleges, continuing education programs, certification programs and conferences to fall into step with the new demands of teachers' professional development across their entire career, leading on from the novice teacher all the way through to the master teacher. This in turn leads to the fourth difference. We believe that teachers should be treated differently based on where they are at in their professional development and their experience. We do believe that there should be a hierarchy of status that celebrates those teachers who have been in the classroom and have lots of experience but who also have taken the time to go in depth and become more profound in their knowledge. Just as we encourage differentiation in the classroom with our students, we here at Connections want to differentiate in your professional development. The fifth big difference is how we structure your professional development experience. We help you pinpoint your own personal professional development needs using a unique self-assessment tool. This means that you personally can track your own growth from being a novice fresh out of university to being a little bit more advanced than to professionalization to becoming an expert and hopefully some of you will also reach the level of being a master. Finally, the sixth and maybe most exciting change is that we flip the training. Evidence from Darling Hammond, from Marasano, the OECD and the TASSIS reports all show that most teachers do indeed receive professional development training. They just don't get it in the right format. This is why at Connections we first send a video to our participants in which we've taken the time to identify the core concepts, definitions, theories that are going to be in play in the workshop and then we meet face to face. This means that when we're together we can explain the authentic use of this information. And after we ask teachers to make a kind of a promise to themselves. What is it that they are actually going to change and how will they apply that new knowledge in their classroom? This information is stored in our e-portfolios and we offer follow-ups to those teachers over the next 10 years. This type of professional development has a higher probability of impacting and creating real change in the classroom. We hope you'll be in contact with us soon and let us know how we can support your professional development as an educator.