We’re thrilled to unveil the latest MirrorTalk update, packed with features to boost your curriculum and collaborative capabilities! Here’s what’s new:

Assessment questions

Authentic assessment is when participants construct their understanding by reflecting on their experience and then demonstrate their understanding by answering Assessment questions. Understanding then becomes not just a participant’s perception of their experience, but an accurate depiction of the participant’s experience.

Invite participants to demonstrate understanding more authentically. Group owners may add multiple assessment questions (max: 8) as a follow-up to the reflection prompts and evaluate based on your provided answers or learning standards.

Step 1:

Group Owner adds Assessment question(s) and answer(s) while customizing the reflection

Step 2:

Participant answers Assessment question(s) and answer(s) after reflecting on their learning experience

Step 3:

Review the participant’s answer to the Assessment question(s) in the Understanding section of the dashboard card

Other changes

Group Collaboration: Invite unlimited “Group Managers” (co-teachers, coaches, admin, mentors, etc.) to view your dashboard and collaborate on participant data. Share insights effortlessly with a unique invite link, fostering a more collaborative approach to building success based on reflection

Revamped Personal Workspace: Our redesigned UI offers clearer access to essential teacher tools:

• Recharge: Take mental and physical breaks between classes or during planning
• Recording: Capture observations for coaching and self-reflection
• Timer: Manage whole-group activities and focus time effectively
• Zoom Integration: Enable telepresence for seamless remote teaching

Assess everyone – even yourself – and change the game! Try MirrorTalk + M2.

MirrorTalk + M2 is the unique classroom assistant that captures the best data for observation and daily feedback for teachers, turns small group station dreams into a reality, and prioritizes reflection for everyone in class.

Schedule a live demo to learn more!

The post Product update: October 15, 2024 appeared first on Swivl.

We’re excited to announce our latest MirrorTalk release, featuring improvements that make reflection more accessible and personalized for learners across all educational levels.

Expanded Lesson

A new, expanded Lesson is waiting on the dashboard for every new reflection completed by you and your group participants. The Lesson will feel more detailed, personalized, and actionable, revealing key insights you may be overlooking that are crucial to your growth.

Streamlined Dashboard

 A new compressed view of reflection cards offers a quick overview of how your group is thinking, with one-click access to each participant’s detailed feedback and scores.

Customizable Participant View

You can now choose between a full or limited dashboard experience for group participants. Show the full set of scores and insights, or opt for a more focused view with only understanding scores and the lesson.

Copy Insights to Share

Easily copy feedback and scores from any reflection card to share via email or documents. Perfect for sharing reflection insights with parents, coaches, and colleagues.

Simplified Reflection Setup

We’ve reduced the choices required to setup a new reflection without compromising on any functionality. Plus, you can now manually enter prompts from scratch when the situation calls for it.

Next Steps

The updates are now live for all users! Visit your dashboard to try them today.

Your feedback continues to drive our improvements, and we’re committed to making MirrorTalk an essential tool for building reflective thinking foundations.

Share what how your thinking has improved since you started reflecting with MirrorTalk by tagging MirrorTalk on Bluesky.

Expand the lesson even further with MirrorTalk + M2

MirrorTalk + M2 is the unique classroom assistant that captures the best data for observation and daily feedback for teachers, turns small group station dreams into a reality, and prioritizes reflection for everyone in class.

Schedule a live demo to learn more!

The post Product update: October 4, 2024 appeared first on Swivl.

We’re excited to announce our latest MirrorTalk release, just in time for the back to school season.

Highlights of this release include a new Library for organizing your reflections, Example activities for quick use and inspiration, and other improvements to the reflection experience.

Get inspired and organized in the Library

The new Library helps you access and organize reflections, and browse an ever-growing list of Examples built by the MirrorTalk team and inspired by power users.

• An enhanced reflection view makes it easier to find existing reflections so you can re-use them across and within your Groups. 
• Add a label to any reflection to organize by topic, unit, or your own personal system.
• Assign reflections in one click from the Library, and grab a link to share a reflection with students via email, LMS, or any digital channel.

The Library helps you stay organized and make reflection part of every learning activity, for every student, every day.

Explore new possibilities with Examples

To help teachers envision how MirrorTalk can fit daily lesson plans and enhance reflective routines, we’ve introduced Example activities:

• Browse a range of ready-to-use reflections with options for back to school, creativity, gratitude, and more.
• Customize Examples with just a few clicks to adapt them to your curriculum, population, or goals.
• Explore Workspace examples featuring multi-modal tools like whiteboard, recharge breathing exercises, and video recording for use on Mirror hardware. Learn more here.

An inspiring group of Example reflections are available in your Library today, with dozens more coming soon. Have an idea for an Example we should add? Tell us on X!

Guide students through custom practice and reflection activities

Speaking of the Workspace, we’ve also added a timer to overlay other Workspace tools, giving teachers a more powerful way to manage their classroom flow.

• Set time constraints for any Workspace activity, helping students stay focused and on-task.
• Seamlessly transition from timed activities to reflections, reinforcing reflection as a natural part of every learning experience.

We’re hard at work on more features that make the Workspace a tool for more flexible, multimedia learning activities that enhance the reflection and assessment process.

Other improvements

We’ve made several other smaller improvements that make reflecting with MirrorTalk a smoother experience. These include:

• Moving the gif greeting to the beginning of reflections that include Workspace activities
• Auto-advancing to next steps at the end of timed activities
• Allowing up to 8 prompts for the extra-detailed reflections you have in mind

As you move into the 2024 school year, we hope these updates will help you make reflection a priority and a seamless part of your daily classroom routine.

Your input drives our development, and we’re committed to making MirrorTalk your most powerful classroom tool for fostering reflective thinking. We’d love to hear how you’re using these new features. Share your experiences and tips for making reflection a habit with us on social media by tagging @MirrorTalkAI on X.

Become a MirrorTalk Level 1 Ambassador!

“From zero
to classroom” is our brand-new MirrorTalk Level 1 certification workshop that participants can’t stop talking about. This introductory session is designed to help educators get started with MirrorTalk for enhancing personal and classroom reflection. We will guide you step-by-step from initial setup to confidently utilizing the platform with your students & other teachers. Digital certificates available. Learn more and register here. 

The post Bring inspiration and organization to your reflection routine with MirrorTalk’s back to school update appeared first on Swivl.

We’re excited to announce our latest MirrorTalk release, featuring improvements that make reflection more accessible and personalized for learners across all educational levels. 

Personalized Questions Guided by Teachers’ Objectives

We’ve enhanced our AI-generated questions process to create more accurate and relevant prompts for students during reflection. By basing subsequent questions on the first Recall question we ask students, we’re ensuring that the unique reflection experience for each student closely with a teacher’s entered objectives. This personalized approach creates a more tailored and effective reflection process, bridging the gap between teacher intent and student engagement.

Session and Open Login

We’ve introduced a new Session login feature for participants on mobile and web platforms. This update removes barriers to reflection by allowing anyone to complete reflection assignments without creating a MirrorTalk account and streamlines the reflection process, encouraging more frequent practice. For special education or events when you want the simplest setup possible, you can create “Open Groups”, which do not require participants to identify themselves by name. When they start reflecting, MirrorTalk will snap a quick photo of each participant for the Dashboard so teachers can still clearly delineate the data among their participants.

Motivation Assessment and Development

Inspired by Carol Dweck’s research on motivation, we’ve integrated a motivation-focused question during each reflection to further direct the Dashboard insight we provide you on how motivation drives or inhibits learners from challenging themselves. This addition helps both students and educators understand the role that motivation plays in their learning and helps them foster a growth mindset in every learning activity. 

Other Improvements

We’ve introduced new grade bands: Early Childhood, K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, Adult, Team, and Higher Ed. These bands ensure grade-level appropriate question prompts for learners above and below grade level and open up more opportunities to reflect in public spaces like libraries where grade levels might be mixed. 

We also made the Greetings step (i.e. “Wave!”) optional, reducing potential awkwardness for adult learners or students who shy away from the performative aspect of greeting themselves when they reflect.

Next Steps

Your feedback continues to drive our improvements, and we’re committed to making MirrorTalk an essential tool for building reflective thinking foundations.

We’d love to hear what student learning gaps you’re uncovering with MirrorTalk. Share your experiences with us on social media by tagging MirrorTalk on Bluesky.

Personalization on the fly (even for you, teach!) with MirrorTalk + M2

MirrorTalk + M2 is the unique classroom assistant that captures the best data for observation and daily feedback for teachers, turns small group station dreams into a reality, and prioritizes reflection for everyone in class.

The post Product update: August 8, 2024 appeared first on Swivl.

Download a pdf version

M2 + Mirror are an interactive reflective solution available as hardware (M2) or stand-alone software (MirrorTalk) for any device. Together, they support students, teachers, and adult learners. MirrorTalk generates insights that:

• Uncover learning gaps
• Measure understanding
• Track zone (ZPD), mindset, and more

MirrorTalk automates the reflection process. By inputting a learning objective from a lesson plan, a teaching standard, or a professional development goal, MirrorTalk generates custom reflections in seconds. In addition to the insight dashboard generated after each reflection, participants also receive actionable and personalized feedback.

With M2, you can guide small groups through social and project-based learning activities. Many of our users incorporate Workspace when they customize reflections for their learning objectives, which adds engaging tools like a whiteboard, lesson resources, timers, polling, and more to their students’ activities. This enables students to work and reflect autonomously and collaboratively, allowing teachers to focus on other areas of the class.

• Set objective
• AI generates prompts
• Reflect out loud
• Get insights

Here are some ideas to get everyone reflecting regardless of subject area, grade level, or specialty, inspired by real users.

Make math relevant

No matter what grade level or type of math you teach, you’ve heard students groan “OK, but when will I ever use this?” too many times to count. When you set up a reflection based on math learning objectives on MirrorTalk the prompts are automatically generated to help students make connections between math and the world around them. It also encourages them to acquire the reflective skills they need to persevere through challenging math problems.

Improve writing with verbal reflection

When students reflect with MirrorTalk, AI analyzes their verbal word choices and offers feedback on how to improve their thinking, not only giving teachers a clearer picture of how well students understand concepts, but their mindsets, too. The verbal feedback MirrorTalk gives students instantly also helps them improve by conveying a summary of their thoughts in writing, demonstrating to students how to make stronger writing choices on future assignments.

Extra support for English learners

MirrorTalk helps English learners find their voice while adjusting to new learning environments as well as gain confidence while preparing them for oral examinations. Set up any activity Objective in Spanish (more languages coming soon!) have students respond in English and MirrorTalk provides judgment-free and encouraging feedback to your students after each reflection.

Bringing history into context

Organize students into small groups and set up a Reflection with an M2 Workspace:

• Set the Objective and choose a Focus.
  • E.g. Students should reflect on the impact of rhetoric in a speech or protest on shaping the historical event we’re studying.
• Check the Workspace button. 
• Step 1: Add the Link tool with the video or audio clip of your selection to students to watch/listen to and record directions for the students:
  • E.g. First you will hear the speech/protest in your small groups.
• 2nd step: Add the Timer tool, set the desired time for discussion, and record directions for the students:
  • E.g. Discuss how this speech or protest might have been perceived by the audience of that historical period.

At the end, students will reflect not only on the impact that this selection had on this moment in history but also the impact it made on them. MirrorTalk will share actionable feedback for the group on they can make connections within other historical contexts.

A self-sustained feedback loop in Speech and Debate

Organize students into small groups and set up a Reflection with an M2 Workspace:

• Set the Objective and choose a Focus.
  • For example: Listen to your classmates practice their extemporaneous speech and then critique their performance.
• Check the Workspace button. 
• Add only one step: the Recording tool, and record directions for the students:
  • For example: The first group member will record themselves orating their speech for the rest of their groupmates.

This idea infuses feedback two-fold for both the speaker and their audience: the speaker will get feedback from the group on the spot when they answer the reflective questions that MirrorTalk asks. The group members will also receive encouraging feedback from MirrorTalk on how they are developing their feedback skills.

Go deeper than diagnostic

Before students begin any curriculum, we measure their incoming knowledge through a diagnostic exam, but this only gives us a number, and usually not the most holistic one because you’re missing the student’s internal understanding and mindset before, during, and after the exam. By setting up a MirrorTalk Objective with the diagnostic exam’s subject right after students complete the exam, students receive instant, encouraging feedback to help them prepare for their test results and give you a deeper sense of that student’s learning gaps. This helps you plan your differentiation strategies at the beginning of the school year with more accuracy and confidence.

Your go-to “end-of-anything” reflection

MirrorTalk’s Summative Focus allows students to reflect on how an end-of-unit project really went. Set up a MirrorTalk reflection with your project’s specific Objective about your project and choose the Summative Focus. MirrorTalk’s questions will ask students to self-assess their work and describe the processes they took to complete the project. Afterward, MirrorTalk will provide actionable feedback to students on how to improve in future projects.

Practice calm and mindfulness

Create calm in a busy, public space like the library and set up the reflection with an Objective that has students reflect on any school or life experience e.g. “Take this time to talk about anything on your mind.” Choose a Focus like motivation, gratitude, or improving relationships. 

At the end of every reflection, MirrorTalk offers students a Recharge exercise: a brain break that calms or energizes depending on which one the student chooses. The student will then receive supportive and encouraging feedback and guidance on how to improve their thinking on whatever they discussed in the reflection.

Keeping hands-on STEM projects

During labs, M2 + MirrorTalk is your students’ guide on the side. Organize students into small groups and set up a Reflection with a Workspace:

• Set the Objective and choose a Focus.
  • E.g. Work in small groups at your lab stations today.
• Check the Workspace button. 
• Step 1: Add the Link tool with the video clip describing the lab’s safety procedures and record directions for the students:
  • E.g. Take a few minutes to refresh on our lab’s safety procedures before you begin.
• Step 2: Add the Link tool for your online slide deck detailing the instructions for today’s specific experiment. Record directions for the students:
  • E.g. Review today’s experiment instructions and prepare your lab stations.
• Step 3: Add the Whiteboard tool for students to write down any outcomes or notes from the experiment. Record directions for the students:
  • E.g. Jot down anything you want me to know about your experiment results on the whiteboard before you finish up and reflect on this experience.

Finally, students reflect on their experiment as a group. They’ll get instant feedback from MirrorTalk regardless if their experiment was successful to motivate them for their presentation of their results to the rest of the class. 

Make M2 a socratic seminar participant

This activity lets M2+MirrorTalk shine at what it does best. Set your Objective to guide your student’s discussion. Seat M2 at a place in the circle. When it’s M2’s turn to “speak”  it will generate relevant questions to spark a collaborative discussion during students’ Socratic Seminars. MirrorTalk’s encouraging feedback will help every student find their voice if they’re struggling to find their voice in seminar settings. 

Parent and community feedback

At any school-sponsored event, set up M2 as your go-to reflection station for faculty, parents, and community members to get feedback and understanding of the initiatives happening at your school. Set up the Objective based on the theme of the event, whether it be an art exhibit, school play, or open house, and gain instant feedback from MirrorTalk about how the event was perceived.

Ready to transform your reflective practice with M2+MirrorTalk? Schedule a live demo with the Swivl team to learn more.

Schedule a live demo

The post Make reflection part of every learning activity, for every student, every day appeared first on Swivl.

Today, we’re excited to officially announce MirrorTalk.ai the mobile and web version of the Mirror, which we launched earlier this year. MirrorTalk has free and premium plans to cover everyone’s needs.

MirrorTalk is a tool for reflecting out loud that can be customized and focused for assessment, creative thinking, motivation, development, and more. Each reflection brings AI-powered insights on how you are thinking, and how to improve.

Modernity has made us less reflective than we’ve ever been. While engagement gets the overwhelming priority in education and life, we already know learning comes from reflection. Our aim is to restore the balance in our minds between engagement and reflection by leveraging AI to open up unique opportunities that aid how we reflect. 

Reflecting with MirrorTalk is as simple as talking about what you’re working on. Start by stating your learning objective, and you’ll immediately get a set of customized reflection prompts, which can be tailored to the language, length, or focus that fits your needs. From there, MirrorTalk helps you talk it out in the comfort of an objective and impartial listener. When you’re done, you get instant feedback, insights, and scores to help you understand and improve your thinking. You can use it yourself or assign reflections to students, teachers, leaders, and more. 

The reflective foundations

MirrorTalk automates reflection so you can talk it out with the frequency and personalization you’ve always wanted, but didn’t think you had the time for. And MirrorTalk’s Dashboard shows you insights about your thinking you may never have realized you needed, until now.

The lesson

Based on your reflection, we identify the Lesson – a learning gap or adaptive lesson that you may be struggling with. It’s like having developmental psychologists Jean Piaget or Robert Kegan consult you on any one of your reflections. 

Understanding

By reporting on how well you construct knowledge and derive meaning, Understanding identifies how you’re generating insights or coming to new realizations.

Zone

Based on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), Zone identifies the optimal stress levels for your learning activities and helps you fine-tune the challenges you take on. 

Mindset

Expanding on Carol Dweck’s work, Mirror analyzes your thinking for evidence of a fixed or growth Mindset, then goes even deeper, analyzing the tone of your self-talk and the level of motivation represented in your thinking.

We even present data on developmental stages, cognitive and social skills, and cognitive biases. We also have more unique and powerful insights in the works.

MirrorTalk for everyone

MirrorTalk’s reflections can be customized for PK-12, higher education, and adults, and both the content and language of dashboard insights are developmentally appropriate for the participant.

• K12 classrooms: Set up reflections on any learning objective, for any grade, with the ability to focus on depth of knowledge, retrieval, creativity, problem solving, and more. Get feedback on how students are understanding what they need to learn and use our reflective foundations to guide curriculum, assessments, and PD.

• Professional Development: Most PD and coaching initiatives are slow and create dependence on institutions to make progress. MirrorTalk gets teachers thinking in motion automatically and prepares them to take on curriculum changes, formal coaching, certifications, and more. Also, we believe using MirrorTalk with students – to peer inside the minds of learners – is the next great leap forward beyond feedback from video coaching.

• Higher Ed: Help students across the whole university stay engaged in their academic growth, and help specific departments create better outcomes. Aid student teachers in their field work and even get them instant feedback on their lesson plans from reflection data of the students they are teaching.

New possibilities

We believe MirrorTalk opens up new possibilities in education and for humanity itself. Not only does it help restore balance in our minds with time spent over-engaging, it could help us reflect more. By helping people learn foundational life lessons with less difficulty and suffering, our vision is to help everyone learn and grow better than ever before. 

Get started

Ready to experience MirrorTalk? Sign up on the web or download the mobile app today and get a 60-day trial of our Pro plan, absolutely free. After that, you can continue using the free version, or invest in a plan that fits your needs. Plus, don’t miss the chance to demo the Mirror hardware device, and experience its power as a 3-in-1 reflection station, recording tool, and interactive small group guide. 

In a constantly accelerating world, the ability to adapt is more important than ever. Investing in building students’ and teachers’ reflective foundations will make it possible for everyone to thrive.

The post Introducing MirrorTalk.ai appeared first on Swivl.

In our latest MirrorTalk release, we’ve listened to your feedback and are excited to bring you improved workflows, enhanced visibility for reflection feedback, and more. These updates make reflecting with MirrorTalk more insightful and accessible for educators and students.

Faster student and teacher workflows

Logging in and exiting group mode is now more seamless with email and pin code access. This provides a smoother and more secure log-in experience and takes another thing off a teacher’s plate.

After unlocking student mode, teachers are now brought directly to the Dashboard. This helps teachers gain insights about their students’ learning gaps even faster. 

Immediate feedback on the dashboard

Immediate feedback is now surfaced on the dashboard. This provides a better experience for both teachers and students, allowing them another opportunity to learn from feedback and improve their reflective skills faster.

Other improvements

In addition to these features, we’ve made several other improvements and updates:

• Reflections will continue uploading even after you logout or shutdown your MirrorTalk before the upload has finished.
• The Coach role now allows instructional coaches to view all reflections within a Group.

Next steps

As always, your feedback drives our improvements, and we’re committed to making MirrorTalk better for everyone.

Learn more about your AI classroom companion

MirrorTalk + M2 is the unique classroom assistant that captures the best data for observation and daily feedback for teachers, turns small group station dreams into a reality, and prioritizes reflection for everyone in class.

The post Product update: May 23, 2024 appeared first on Swivl.

In this week’s release, we’re bringing more delight, more motivation, and more learning to the student experience. How are we doing that? Instant feedback on student reflections!

This update also includes: the new Summative Focus for end of year reflections, flexible response times for adults and older students, and better insights.

Now, students get personalized feedback read aloud to them just seconds after they complete a reflection. We’ve heard from many users that reflection feedback is the most powerful part of the experience. But until now, there was no easy, immediate way for students to access their feedback. With this update, we’re excited to see how students can become even more invested in building their reflective skills, as they instantly read and hear about the insights they’ve shared, and how they can reflect even more deeply next time.

There’s no better way to experience the new instant feedback feature than with the new Summative focus. This reflection focus works perfectly for end-of-year student reflections, and can help you simplify your summer planning, amplify your productivity, and even deepen connectivity with students one last time before they advance grade levels. Use this focus with Workspace to automate and add reflection to end-of-year group projects. 

To make reflecting with MirrorTalk more flexible across ages and grade levels, we’ve updated the way response times work. Users now have 15 seconds to reflect on each question as a default. For younger students, 15 seconds is the limit. However, older students and adult users have unlimited time to respond, with the option to move on to the next question when they’re ready.

In addition to these updates, we’ve also improved insights across all reflections, making them more grade-level appropriate.

Learn more about your AI classroom companion

MirrorTalk + M2 is the unique classroom assistant that captures the best data for observation and daily feedback for teachers, turns small group station dreams into a reality, and prioritizes reflection for everyone in class.

The post Product update: April 18, 2024 appeared first on Swivl.

End of year reflections are often used by teachers after the testing season winds down and everyone needs a little time to decompress. But it still takes class time to implement it with pen and paper (or digital form!) and the results are often treated like an exit ticket, rather than a thoughtful and insightful measure of learning that took place throughout a year. And more often than not, this data ends up living in a gradebook or a folder, but rarely is it used to help shape a student’s future.

We think end of year reflections with MirrorTalk can motivate students to set better goals, improve their empathy for each other, and more strongly measure a teacher’s impact than other assessment tools. In about one minute per student using MirrorTalk’s AI, teachers are able to identify gaps and opportunities in their student’s abilities and are shown insights into their sentiment, objective understanding, and mental transformations. 

So if you think you don’t have time before the year ends to collect this kind of data from reflection alone –  think, think, and THINK again, because MirrorTalk makes it possible.

1. Set goals and improve resilience

Reflection is a surefire way to get students thinking realistically about their goals for next year and set their own plans into motion to tackle challenges they faced this year. And as their teacher who is sending them off to face those challenges, what if you could pay these insights forward? Imagine sharing with their future teacher a holistic view of every student – not just their test scores – wrapped up in an easy-to-read reflection card in the time it took you to type their email address? With MirrorTalk, you can.

With MirrorTalk’s end of year Summative Focus we help students consider their yearlong achievements and their setbacks, and we offer encouraging feedback to keep them feeling motivated and improve their resilience throughout the process. Some example prompts include:

• What did you discover about your learning style or strategies that helped you overcome challenges during projects this year? 

• What new strategies or approaches would you like to try in future projects? 

• Describe a moment this year when you felt really proud of something you accomplished.

2. Build empathy during project-based learning

The end of the school year is the perfect time to have students dive into creative self-led projects in groups. M2’s Workspaces guides students through the project, keeps them engaged, and has them reflect in small groups. 

When students work in small groups they are exposed to each other’s communication and learning styles and must learn to cooperate. This often means developing a vocabulary that is appropriate to the classroom, and it’s not uncommon for conflict to ensue as a result. However, these group experiences give students invaluable insight into their relationships with other students and sharpens their understanding of the role they play in conflicts. 

With MirrorTalk, students can reflect on collaborative projects they participated in, and start considering their classmates’ feelings and perspectives in ways that didn’t seem obvious to them while working together. As a result, reflection can increase empathy in students leading to a stronger, more positive classroom community. Now that’s how you end your school year strong, don’t you think?

3. Student insights = your impact

Reflecting with MirrorTalk gives you tailored insights to support your students before they leave your class, and it also helps you realize the enormous impact you made on them throughout the year. Everything your students learned in your class was because of you and the environment you created for them to learn in. And when students reflect on what they learned, you’ll also be able to identify trends in your teaching that you’d like to improve for next year. Through the AI dashboard, you’ll be able to uncover teaching blind spots and identify where the learning gaps occurred so you can clearly identify areas in your curriculum that you can improve.

Time and energy will always compete for attention in your classroom, but particularly at the end of year when everyone is running short on steam. With MirrorTalk, it’s truly possible to make reflection a part of every learning activity, for every student, every day.

Learn more

Ready to transform your reflective practice? Learn more about M2+MirrorTalk!

The post Product highlight: Think no one has time to reflect at the end of the year? Think again. appeared first on Swivl.

It’s no surprise that companies and sports teams build reflection into their work. Leaders know that group reflection, like watching and discussing game tape, leads to deeper learning. We get better when we reflect together.

While group work is a staple in classrooms, group reflections are rare. The logistics of planning project based learning activities for and assessing group reflection have made it impractical. Until now.

With our next major Mirror release (March 25th), we’ll make group reflection more convenient, powerful and automated than ever. When we do, we’ll also – without irony – be making group work itself more convenient, powerful and automated than ever.  

This article will explain what’s coming and how you can expect to use it soon.

Just start a reflection

Set up the reflection as you normally would for individual students by adding a goal, a focus, dimensions, and more. Once it is set up, multiple students at once can pick their name/profile and get started. That’s it! Mirror is set up for group reflection out of the box. You don’t need to do anything. It even customizes the greeting for groups to help build camaraderie before they begin answering the reflective questions. Once complete, the reflective insights can start to give you a sense about how the whole group is thinking about their learning.

Pro tip: You can encourage more voices and avoid the same student speaking every time by adjusting the response length to longer intervals. 

It’s quick, easy and effective. But that’s just the beginning. During reflection setup, you also have the ability to add what we call the Workspace. This is where group work itself can be transformed. 

The Workspace has tools for you to build group activities that enhance learning and directly lead students toward reflection. All you need to do is add your first Step to get started with Workspace. These Steps are progressive instructions that include recorded and transcribed directions and incorporate various learning tools.

These directions and tools are presented automatically to any group of students that are using Mirror. All it takes is a couple minutes to set up, either on Mirror itself at Mirror on the web. You can add as few or as many steps as you like! 

Here we’ll outline some scaffolded examples of how to include Steps in your Workspaces. 

Recharge

Learning is stressful. Part of adapting to transitions in the classroom is figuring out how to quickly calm down and refocus from task to task. And reflection’s role in learning makes it worth making sure the transition was effective. To aid that, Mirror has a wide selection of tools for Recharging exercises – all of which take less than 2 minutes to minimize disruption. Exercises can be selected for their calming or energizing effects, or for whatever you think is appropriate for the classroom at that time. When done, students are automatically progressed into their reflection – refreshed with a new perspective – and for you to get those all important reflective insights on how they are thinking. 

Guided activity

Each step includes the option of voice recording and transcribed directions (which can also be typed). When activated for the student, the voice recording is automatically played. They can see the transcription throughout the activity and replay the directions as needed. You can guide students through any activity you desire! Want them to work with manipulatives? Perhaps they should practice their drawing skills? Want them to read a poem? All of that is now possible in a “learning center” that is fully automated. Once the activity is done, students are once again automatically prompted to reflect on that activity, accelerating the learning that just occurred, and furthering the insights you gain from how they are processing the experience. 

Pro tip: Want to add some constructive pressure to that activity? You can even set a countdown timer. 

Make it visual

The Workspace’s learning tools aren’t just for group directions and management, they are also for making learning visual. Just follow the same setup steps as before and select Whiteboard. Students will be presented with the same directions and a visual thinking canvas.  

They can work on math problems, mind maps, sketching skills and more! They can do it with Mirror standing upright or on its back for a real canvas experience.

Another tool to make thinking and skills visual is a Recording (which can also be used for capturing teaching skills). Have students practice delivery presentations or oral arguments. Both students and teachers will be able to “see” their skills in action. Once again, this activity is followed by a reflection on what they observed, what they realized, and insights about their thinking gets passed along to you. 

Multi-step activities

You can add as many steps as you like. As you add more steps, the more extended student work you can set up. For example, you could set up a Design Thinking exercise – build a spaghetti cantilever. Step 1 could be to watch a YouTube video to get some background knowledge or inspiration to start the project. Step 2 could be to use the whiteboard tool to sketch out their initial ideas. Step 3 could be to start prototyping and building at their desk with a time limit. Step 4 could be to record a presentation of their work so far, and then have them transition to a spoken reflection on what they learned from the experience. At the end, you will see a summary of the activity with reflective insights on what the students learned. 

At the end, you will see a summary of the activity with reflective insights on what the students learned. 

Multiple Mirrors

Long term, you can even imagine a classroom as having multiple Mirrors. This makes daily individual reflection even more accessible to every student. It also makes it possible for teachers to set up many autonomous small groups for project-based learning instead of just one. This would allow educators to circulate between groups and facilitate as they see fit instead of being anchored to one. And each group would be generating reflective insights for the teacher to gain a clearer picture of their work from day to day. This is one vision of a classroom of the future where teachers can truly teach at a higher order. 

More group work is better

We built Mirror to support group work and reflection for a reason. We believe more group work and more group reflection promotes better learning. 

Like teaching has gone from sage to guide, we also think technology – and more specifically personal devices – also needs to get out of the way to support learning. It’s proven that students learn better when they are engaged physically in what they are doing. Small group work also accelerates the development of their social emotional skills – they can observe each other, make eye contact and have to figure out how to work together. These are skills that are incredibly important toward retaining competitive advantage over AI. And prioritizing group work automatically promotes the kind of learning activities we want to see more of in classrooms – project based learning, design thinking, inquiry, and more. 

Time and logistics often limit what can be done in classrooms with groups. This is why technology CAN still help and why we made Mirror. It now makes it possible to do radically more small group work than ever. 

Stay tuned as our reflective insights for groups also make major leaps in the coming months ahead!

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