Mirrortalk 2.0 is coming March 18th, it is the next evolution of Mirrortalk and we’re calling it M2. It brings together instructional support, feedback, reflection, and boosting participation into a simpler, more coherent experience across web, mobile, and the M2 device.

This release helps teachers make every tier of instruction great and participation visible, giving stronger support in the moments that matter most, both during and after class.

Real-time support

M2 will deliver immediate, actionable tips, on-demand. Throughout the class, teachers can click for immediately actionable tips based on best practices to support Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction. Based on the context of the class, M2 can generate a guided high-impact learning activity for teachers to walk students through or opt in to have M2 guide the class through an audio experience.

Teachers can also have input on the types of tips or interactions they need at the moment to support all student needs. Now, teachers can request a check for understanding, a discussion question, or classroom management suggestion as tips with the tap of a button.

A dashboard that turns class into next steps

After every class, teachers need clarity–not just more data. 

The new M2 dashboard is organized around My Takeaways: a concise summary of what went well and what to improve next time. Feedback is broken down by chunks of the lesson (warm-up, instruction, group work, wrap-up), so teachers can connect insights to real moments they remember. Each activity is also given a participation score, teachers can use this as feedback for how Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction is landing with students.

Teachers can:

• View feedback alongside the class transcript, in context
• See which instructional moves mattered most and where engagement was visible
• Receive auto-suggested Reflections, all tied directly to what just happened

Each visit to the Dashboard now becomes a momentum builder for the growth of the teacher and the entire class.

A simpler way to start and organize teaching

M2 simplifies how teachers move from planning to teaching.

Teachers now start activities from within Groups, such as “Period 3 Algebra”. All activities that are created within a group can be managed and revisited within the group.

Activities that aren’t tied to a specific group live in a single General group, which means there’s no more cluttered personal activities to manage.

Even though your teaching activities will now live in Groups, they are not visible to any students within the group. Students only ever see the work you assign to them, like Guides and Reflections.

Teaching with M2, now from your phone

Sometimes the easiest device to use is the one already in your pocket. M2 app helps support teachers, making tiered instruction easier with just a mobile device. 

With M2 app, teachers can now run M2 teacher activities from phones and tablets:

• Start an activity
• Receive immediate tips to improve tiered instruction and suggested Guides 
• All through a simple, mobile-friendly chat experience

During class, teachers can request a check for understanding, discussion questions or classroom management tips with a single tap. After class, they can continue the conversation with M2—reflecting, clarifying feedback, and revisiting important moments, all through a text-based chat. 

This mobile experience is intentionally simplified for use during instruction, with no audio output. This keeps the attention on student instruction and participation, not screens.

Reflection to bring clarity 

Reflection works best when it’s immediate and conversational.

After class, teachers reflect by talking with M2 via text—on web or mobile—while the lesson is still fresh. They can dig into specific moments, revisit feedback, and analyze strengths and weaknesses of participation.

It’s a reflection that brings clarity and helps teachers come prepared for deeper conversations about their instruction, either on their own or with a coach. 

What’s been removed?

To keep M2 focused, several features have been retired:

• Whiteboard
• Personal groups and personal verbal reflections for teachers
• Time-based tips
• Verbal Ask M2 inside chat

These changes reinforce a single goal: helping teachers create the conditions for meaningful engagement, every day.

Why M2 matters

M2 isn’t about adding more features. It’s about aligning everything around what actually improves instruction: tiered supports, actionable feedback, and visible engagement. 

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“Reflection is powerful” is a truism in education.

We want all students to learn how to effectively present evidence of their thinking, set goals that motivate them, and develop the self-awareness they need to be life-long learners. 

Teachers know that the best way to achieve this is through regular and consistent reflection.

We’ve talked with thousands of educators about their reflective practices over the years. We’ve supported reflection with the Swivl Robot and with our student-focused tools Recap and Synth. We know that while teachers’ ultimate goal is to create an environment where their students are doing frequent, high-quality reflections, it is a struggle for most to make the time to do so.

Setting up effective reflections takes planning and research. Guiding and assessing reflections is incredibly time-consuming. So reflection often takes a back seat to other forms of assessment for these logistical reasons. 

These conversations and findings influenced why we developed our newest reflection solution: MirrorTalk

MirrorTalk is a solution that automates the setup, guidance, and assessment of reflections with AI. Our AI-enabled technology is delivered into classrooms through a portable, ruggedized kiosk that makes it easier than ever to build reflective routines in the classroom. 

The math of language

A classroom powered by automated reflection is now possible thanks to AI. Specifically, it is possible through one of the main technologies behind today’s popular AI – Large Language Models (LLMs). 

LLMs are designed to understand, generate, and respond to human language. They are trained on vast amounts of text data, which enables them to answer questions, write essays, summarize information, and even create content like poems or stories.

With MirrorTalk, we use this capability to help educators easily set up reflections with effective questions. Then AI serves up those questions in its engaging interface to guide students to reflect effectively and conversationally. 

For those who are familiar with how AI works, this part is relatively straightforward.

Where it gets less obvious is in the assessment of reflections. At the highest level, LLMs have turned language into math.  And we can leverage this capability to turn reflective conversations back into math using specific prompts with AI.  

The opportunity this presents is that educators can now quickly analyze conversational student reflections in conventional, easy-to-read dashboards – allowing teachers to skim over the results of the reflective dialogue their entire class is having within minutes instead of hours! This is truly what we mean when we say MirrorTalk is automating reflection.

Making reflection the future of assessment

Assessment has always been limited to what can be reviewed efficiently and objectively. This limitation is what has led us to standardize testing and create simplistic polling solutions. While it has been a necessary practice, this has always created some disconnect between learning goals and teaching. 

Now, it finally looks possible to efficiently and objectively assess and score natural, in-depth reflective conversations to easily compile insights that would normally take hours and hours of effort to achieve. This makes reflective practice something that can be incorporated as a daily activity – if not multiple times a day. 

Assessing student learning this way provides a new and more direct way for educators to understand the effectiveness of teaching methods and curriculum. It provides real-time data to identify areas of improvement. It provides a way for teachers to understand the support each of their students needs. It even surfaces the evidence of students thinking they need to establish that learning occurred and no shortcuts were taken.

As noted, with MirrorTalk, reflective prompts can be automatically generated based on a simple recorded teacher goal. Reflection responses can then be assessed based on objective measures teachers commonly use like whether students understand the learning objective, mindset, evidence of thinking, and sentiment – all with the help of AI. 

Feedback to students on how to do effective reflections can even be automated. This helps reinforce and progress students’ reflective skills through any learning experience – compounding improvements in self-awareness and motivation over time. 

We believe that with automated reflections, teachers can now reach new heights of effectiveness with less effort than ever required. And, we believe this transforms what is possible with reflection and what is possible in our system of education itself.

Learn more

Ready to transform your reflective practice?

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With just a few minutes of setup, teachers gain valuable insights into student learning.

Like most teachers, when I was in the classroom, I recognized the value of reflection and the impact it could have on student learning. Simultaneously, I struggled to find the time for my students to reflect regularly throughout the school day. When my students recorded reflections, it was overwhelming to try to watch 90+ recordings, provide tailored feedback to help them strengthen their reflective skills, and give each student the individual support they needed in person.

Can you truly automate reflection?

Swivl is a reflective tools company. We believe there is significant unrealized potential in reflecting and how it can impact thinking and learning whether you are an educator or student. When we set out to build a reflective solution, our first thought was to explore if we could truly automate the reflection process. Could we discover a way to make reflecting fun and engaging? At the same time, could we build a solution that provides educators with robust and unbiased insights about each student or teacher? And, on top of it all, could this solution require minimal time and effort from its participants?

With the help of AI, we developed something that met all of these requirements. We call it M2+MirrorTalk.

MirrorTalk – available on any device – fully automates the reflection process for students. It takes less than 3 minutes to set up the device and record a reflection. Its unique design allows the device to be set up anywhere, so students can record reflections when they’re ready, or when they’re prompted by their teachers.

Here’s how it works on M2:

After powering on the device, teachers scan a QR code to download the MirrorTalk app on any mobile device, then log in.

Once logged in, teachers can create a group and then have students add themselves to the group as they use the device. We designed this experience in this way to resolve privacy concerns of students seeing each other’s reflections and scores and to save a teacher’s time. Groups can be organized for classes by subject and grade level, or by small groups of students based on reading level or interests. A Group can also be created from an existing class rostering service.

Personalize your AI-reflected self

Once a group is created, students and teachers can begin a reflection by either adding their name to the Group new or pick their name from the last time they reflected. This initiates a conversation with their AI-reflected self. An AI-reflected self is an avatar that guides participants through the conversation, asking thoughtful questions throughout.

The reflected self will ask questions like “What are you working on?” or “Were your actions aligned with the objective of the assignment?” These questions are designed to automatically guide a participant through an effective reflection, much like a teacher would. With the help of a participant’s AI-reflected self, reflections become more effective and engaging, without adding more to a teacher’s plate. At the end of each reflection, participants are offered a mindful exercise before transitioning to other activities.

In addition to individual reflections, M2 was built to work with small groups. Small groups can complete a group reflection in the same way they would complete an individual reflection. Each member of the group simply adds themselves to the reflective conversation.

Additional capabilities

As teachers begin to see the benefits of a regular reflective practice, they can utilize the other functionalities of M2+MirrorTalk to bring more time-saving value to their classrooms.

One of the main ways teacher can utilize the system is by bringing more value to their practice is with M2’s silent observation and feedback functionalities to develop their teaching skills, gain in the moment insights into student learning, and actionable recommendations to improve all without having another observer in the classroom.

For students, they can build an outline of the objectives they want students to work towards. MirrorTalk (on M2 or any student device in your classroom) then delivers customizable prompts to students during their reflections to measure if they understood the objective, and if their classroom actions were aligned.

Workspaces, constructed by the teacher, walk students step by step through the activity. Teachers can customize the activities by identifying which interactive tools (whiteboard, timer, recording, etc.) can be access by the students during different parts of the activity. Reflections conclude every activity to give teachers a holistic view of what happened, how it happened, and how students feel about it.

Robust Insights

M2+MirrorTalk were designed to capture short reflections and microbytes of instruction – only a couple minutes in length at a time. Instead of educators spending hours reviewing recordings and transcripts, we created an AI-driven dashboard to bring insights instantly that identify the precise support each individuals’ needs.

With the dashboard, educators can dive into dimensions like understanding, mindset, zone of proximal development and more. All of this data culminates in an summarized reflection card on individual or entire groups. These insights surface applicable analytics for educators to take action on.

In addition to AI-driven insights, MirrorTalk provides teachers with AI-driven feedback. This feedback is based directly on how to improve participants’ thinking and gives strategies on how to do so.

We believe M2+MirrorTalk is pioneering what thinking truly looks like in the modern classroom. Our aim is to leverage AI responsibly to deepen learning, drive engagement, and deliver a differentiated experience that maximizes growth for everyone in education.

Schedule a live demo to learn more!

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