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 90-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.

Mirror guides my second graders through reflection questions on their own, and then I get data on their answers to help me support each student’s needs.

Melisa Hayes | Hilliard Crossing Elementary School, Hilliard, OH

USE CASE

Creating more autonomous and deeply engaged elementary students

Melisa Hayes

2nd Grade Teacher

School/District:

Hilliard Crossing Elementary School, Hilliard, OH

Grade Level 2nd grade

Discovering Mirror: A game-changer in guided learning

Juggling time constraints and wanting to engage my students were the main reasons I was so excited to start using Mirror. This tool allows my kids to reflect on their work at any time. It’s versatile, and any age or ability can use it. My kids can access Mirror at any point of the day, and it fits into my limited schedule.

In my room, Mirror is in a corner where kids can go anytime to use it when they want to reflect. Mirror guides my second graders through reflective questions independently. They get immediate AI-generated feedback, and then I get data on their answers to those questions that help me support each student’s needs. 

And guess what? They love Mirror! 

Not only is it a reflective tool–it can be transformed into an interactive workspace that supports individual and small-group guided learning. It’s amazing for me as an educator to be able to set up the Mirror for small groups. I record instructions, set Mirror to turn into a functional whiteboard, program brain breaks, and stretches, and then bring students back to reflection as the foundation of the activity.

Giving voice to the youngest students

I have always faced challenges when having my students reflect on their learning. Time, of course, is always a factor; but also, there is the added challenge of keeping my students engaged enough to reflect on a lesson, subject, or their behavior. Mirror lets them take that initiative right in class, creating an environment where even young students can feel autonomy over their actions.

Giving my kids the ability to choose how to give their brains a break and center themselves is such a great way to promote their self-advocacy. Mirror does this with the Recharge feature, a series of movement activities aimed at either focus, energy, or rest. Mirror is also customized for each student. They can color code their “profile” and choose the animation they’d like to be greeted with – one of my kids chooses a high five and always giggles when it comes on!

When used in conjunction with a stronger reflective foundation, Mirror has the ability to help even the youngest learners reach a higher order of thinking. This is something we need to consider more in the age of AI.

Try Mirror, commitment-free, with your students

Do your students need more cohesion in their learning experience? Could you use more support amidst time constraints? Explore supporting your students’ learning with reflection. Try Mirror with students in your class for free today!

The post Elevating engagement & autonomy in elementary school appeared first on Swivl.

Reflectivity is the catalyst for dialogue that makes good teaching contagious. Teachers take what they learn from their peers and put it into practice. Teachers are who teachers best learn from.

Danieli Parker | Hallsville Independent School District, TX

USE CASE

To provide a district-wide professional development resource

Danieli Parker

Director of Innovation and Instructional Technology

School/District:

Hallsville Independent School District, TX

A powerful tool for our district

Danieli Parker is the Director of Innovation and Instructional Technology for her school district in East Texas. Her role allows her to utilize technology to support teachers in becoming the most powerful educators they can be in the classroom. With experience as a former elementary teacher, assistant principal, and principal, Danieli understands the demands of the classroom through many lenses. These prior roles largely influence which technologies her district decides to invest in. 

In her mission to provide district-wide support, Danieli found the perfect ally in Reflectivity. No other solution could match its versatility and impact on optimizing peer learning and collaboration.

“Makes good teaching contagious”

In 2015, Hallsville ISD was recognized as a model PLC. Even with this recognition, they were still struggling to coordinate live observations.

“We truly believe in learning from each other and using the strengths of each teacher to build peer learning. But, the biggest challenge in scheduling live observations was making them relevant and meaningful to each teacher. We needed a 4th-grade teacher to observe another 4th-grade teacher, even if they were in different schools, instead of having a 4th-grade teacher observe a 2nd-grade teacher because of availability.”

 Everything changed in 2018 when they were introduced to Reflectivity + Robot. Instead of needing to coordinate live schedules for observations, or travel to different schools to learn from each other, these Swivl solutions enabled each teacher to record high-quality video and audio to be watched asynchronously.

“We would record short lesson segments and then watch the videos together during PLC meetings. The recordings were a catalyst to drive conversations. Teachers would pick up on things happening in the video that I didn’t even notice! This allowed us to have deeper discussions about instructional practices.”

Danieli firmly believes that peer-learning lessons are the gems that stick. “Reflectivity is the catalyst for dialogue that makes good teaching contagious. Teachers learn best from other teachers. They take what they learn from their peers and put it into practice.” The videos she has her teachers record are leveraged to empower her teachers which sustains their professional development throughout the entire year.

Built-in adaptability

Reflectivity’s versatile features offered the teachers at Hallsville multiple ways to collaborate. In addition to the deeper instructional practice discussions, and watching relevant recordings asynchronously, teachers have the option to share written reflections. They can join communities around specific skills, and share links to resources, to build a collaborative mindset, outside of watching lesson recordings.

“Reflectivity has been a game-changer for our new teachers. The educators coming out of teacher prep programs are lacking in their conversation skills,” she said. “They’re more comfortable messaging back-and-forth, which they can do in Reflectivity. They don’t experience any barriers to asking for help or finding resources. Reflectivity provides a comfortable space for both newer and veteran teachers to  converse about instruction.”

Creating your Reflectivity plan

Want to see what Reflectivity can do for your institution’s Instructional Coaching? Schedule a consultation with the Swivl team to learn more.

The post Reflectivity makes good teaching contagious appeared first on Swivl.

Sarah Marin, a 7th-grade English teacher at Hildebrandt Intermediate School, assigns all of her students an end-of-year research project where they present on a country of their choice. This year, she gave her students the option to use Swivl’s new interactive reflection station Mirror to complete verbal project reflections. In previous years, she had her students complete their written reflections. In Sarah’s final tally, 59 of her students chose to complete their reflections with Mirror instead. 

Sarah found that introducing Mirror integrated seamlessly within her classroom assessment dynamic. Most of her students are 12, going on 13, and grew up being comfortable with technology, so they immediately gravitated toward reflection with Mirror. Even students who typically struggle to focus quickly grasped how to use Mirror.  For one of her neurodivergent students in particular, Mirror gave them an immediate confidence boost. Throughout the year, her student had struggled with focus and comprehension in other exercises. While using Mirror, however, this student took the initiative and easily guided themselves through completing the assignment. Her student intuitively understood the reflection’s workflow when presented through Mirror, and stayed focused on the objective throughout the reflection prompts.

Better student outcomes

Sarah loved that her students who chose to complete their reflections with Mirror answered with full fidelity. “It forced them to truly articulate how they had felt about the project,” Sarah explained. “Not having to talk to a teacher and feel judged really enabled my students to open up and use their metacognitive abilities.” 

Reflecting aloud prepared the students for a follow-up reflection discussion. “I noticed that some of the kids who did Mirror first did a better job on their overall reflection because they had already had to put their thoughts into words. It helped some of my students think more deeply about things they had struggled with, making it easier to convey their thoughts in writing.”

Those new dimensions of candor, gleaned through Mirror, provided Sarah with new insights into how she could support each student for the rest of the school year and how to structure the project for better results next year.

Sarah plans to continue using Mirror, seeing applications for self-reflection for next year. She is looking forward to using it at the beginning of the school year to measure each student’s comprehension. Sarah is confident she can use Mirror to individually support each of her students more quickly.

Read more about how Klein ISD educators are using Mirror

• Kleb Intermediate School –  Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning, Kim Sharp, introduces Mirror with her co-teaching partner, Christy Stewart, to their Advanced Humanities class.
• Klein ISD –  Monica Shallenberger, the Director of Professional Learning for the Klein Independent School District, uses Mirror to support her teachers amidst stringent state budgets. 

Interested in seeing how Mirror can support your students and teachers? Sign up to participate in a 30-day, free demo of Mirror.

The post Using verbal reflections to improve student writing appeared first on Swivl.

The kids were in awe of the AI capabilities and had fun customizing their settings to fit their personalities. They were surprised how in tune and accurate the feedback was on their reflections.

Monica Shallenberger | Klein Independent School District, Klein ISD

USE CASE

Providing teacher support with grant-funded tools

Monica Shallenberger

Director of Professional Learning

School/District:

Klein Independent School District, Klein ISD

Grade Level district-wide

As the Director of Professional Learning at Klein Independent School District, Monica Shallenberger needs to keep a global administrative perspective. She has the difficult role of analyzing funding across her district. Monica lamented that with state legislation, “Inflation gaps were not filled this year and have not been filled for six years.”  Although she doesn’t have to cut any of her teachers this year, she is unable to bring on additional support in the form of salaried staff. Tech solutions stood out as the obvious answer to get teachers the classroom support, with Title 1 funding. 

Monica is focused on anything she can do to support her teachers. In Texas, the workforce is drastically changing. Teachers are being thrown into the profession sooner, for hands-on certification, rather than attending student-teaching programs. “We have a lot of uncertified teachers in our district who are working on their certification while on the job. And that’s a very different type of classroom. They’re coming from these different experiences, but without the amount of training that you’d receive in that we all got in college education programs.”

Monica is excited about the possibilities Mirror offers for enhancing reflection and learning for both students and staff. Her teachers are using Mirror to support small group learning. “Teachers are so excited because it’s helping kids build their comprehension. They’re exercising their verbal skills, talking through their processes of learning, and then get actual helpful feedback. Our teachers are blown-away!”

Monica hopes to make Klein ISD a “heavily Mirror integrated district” while navigating budget constraints. She sees opportunities to fund Mirror through grants and Title funds, especially as principals around the district begin to see how Mirror is positively impacting teachers and students.

Read more about how Klein ISD educators are using Mirror

• Kleb Intermediate School –  Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning, Kim Sharp, introduces Mirror with her co-teaching partner, Christy Stewart, to their Advanced Humanities class.
• Hildebrandt Intermediate School – Sarah Marin uses Mirror in her 7th-grade English classroom for project-based learning assessments.

Interested in seeing how Mirror can support your students and teachers? Sign up to participate in a 30-day, free demo of Mirror.

The post Mirror: Helping teachers amid budget cuts appeared first on Swivl.

I found the color coding on each student extremely helpful. Assessing their tone meant I could immediately see the type of day each student was having.

Kim Sharp | Kleb Intermediate School, Klein ISD

USE CASE

Build reflective skills and improve writing outcomes

Kim Sharp

Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning

School/District:

Kleb Intermediate School, Klein ISD

Grade: middle school

As an innovative Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning for Kleb Intermediate School, Kim Sharp wanted to find new ways to gain insights into her students’ learning and growth. She decided to explore tech solutions that qualified for Title 1 funding. Her research led to Swivl’s new interactive reflection station, Mirror.

After receiving Mirror, Kim put the device to the test. Kim had her humanities co-teaching partner, Christy Stewart, create custom reflections in Mirror for each of her students to reflect on their writing processes. Their goal was to determine whether offering an option for students to record verbal reflections would help the students improve their written outcomes.

When setting up custom reflections for students to complete with Mirror, teachers have the choice to type out the “goal” of a reflection or to record themselves as they say the goal out loud. Kim and Christy decided to record the goal so the students would hear their teacher’s voice.

Students were initially hesitant about recording verbal reflections with Mirror, but after demoing how to use it, and hearing their teachers’ voices stating the goal, they quickly warmed up. The students even named their Mirror, Siggy after Sigmund Freud.

Improving students’ reflective skills

The more Kim and Christy used Mirror with their students the more they realized that their students don’t know how to reflect on their own. This made them realize that Mirror needed a dedicated place in their classroom. This newly minted reflection station helps students easily build their reflective skills.

After a student records a reflection with Mirror, Mirror’s AI generates immediate feedback based on the student’s response. Each piece of feedback includes something a student did well, and offers an unbiased insight into how students can improve.

Data grounded in education research and theory

As part of the feedback Mirror offers, teachers can access a dashboard containing individualized reflection cards for each student reflection. To generate the data on each card Mirror’s AI measures the student’s reflection against education research and theories from Piaget, Kegan, Erikson, Vygotsky, CASEL, and more.

Minutes after a student completes a reflection, teachers are able to dive into the data. Mirror presents an overall reflection score comprising sentiment, tone, and mindset scoring. It clearly lays out how a student understood the objective of the reflection, to name a few of the data points.

“I found the teacher dashboard extremely helpful! The color coding on each student’s reflection that assessed their tone meant I could easily see the students that were having a really good day. On the students where the analysis was red, I immediately knew where I needed to focus more one-on-one time.”

Helping students demonstrate how they are thinking

Mirror is helping Christy and Kim better understand the thinking patterns of each of their students. Mirror isn’t a linear assessment. Mirror is enabling Kim and Christy to see a better representation of their students’ thinking processes – in their words, “We’re able to see the students who always think outside of the box, and the students who need more support to think outside of the box.” For Kleb Intermediate School they have found a solution that provides better opportunities for students to process concepts and themes while expressing the depth of their thinking.

Read more about how Klein ISD educators are using Mirror

• Klein ISD –  Monica Shallenberger, the Director of Professional Learning for the Klein Independent School District, uses Mirror to support her teachers amidst stringent state budgets. 
• Hildebrandt Intermediate School – Sarah Marin uses Mirror in her 7th-grade English classroom for project-based learning assessments.

Interested in seeing how Mirror can support your students and teachers? Sign up to participate in a 30-day, free demo of Mirror.

The post Research-based feedback for students and insights for teachers, within minutes appeared first on Swivl.

I checked a 4th grade lesson board, entered that day’s objective into Mirror, and one minute later I had students reflecting and getting targeted feedback.

Jennifer Rodabaugh | Claxton Elementary

USE CASE

Reflection for students and teachers

Jennifer Rodabaugh

Instructional Coach

School/District:

Claxton Elementary/Anderson School District

Grade Level 4th

Before Claxton Elementary started using Mirror, teachers relied on writing assignments as the primary format for collecting student reflections. A few teachers were even bold enough to try video. But, with each of these methods, teachers struggled to identify students’ underlying needs and students experienced long delays between finishing the reflection and receiving feedback.

Claxton teachers needed a solution that helped them understand student learning gaps in more depth and helped cement authentic and timely feedback loops. After vetting several solutions, they chose Mirror.

AI that works for you

Jennifer Rodabaugh is an instructional coach at Claxton Elementary. She embraces her teachers using AI. One of her 4th grade teachers was using ChatGPT to develop written reflective prompts for students but it wasn’t the best fit. It was time-consuming and laborious to develop prompts that were grade-level appropriate and standards-based.While looking for other solutions, they signed up for Mirror’s demo program. Mirror demonstrated how AI would work for them to uncover gaps in student understanding with minimal lift or prep from teachers. With Mirror, Jennifer and the 4th grade teacher effectively generated reflective prompts in under 2 minutes, a task that previously took them 1.5 hours using ChatGPT. “One minute I entered a 4th grade class, I checked the board for that day’s objective, I entered that objective into Mirror and a minute later, I had students reflecting and getting feedback,” Jennifer recounted.

Faster feedback, never generic

The ability to generate reflective prompts quickly and easily was huge for Jennifer and her teachers, but that’s not all that Mirror’s AI can streamline.

Teachers lament grading written and video reflections. It is a time-consuming process, and teachers can’t immediately provide feedback and positive reinforcement to their students. It is in the moments right after an activity ends when students are most unsure of how they did or what they can do to improve in the future. 

Jennifer says, “With this technology, teachers can teach one group and have students reflect with Mirror in other small groups simultaneously, which enables students to get that immediate feedback that teachers typically don’t have time to give in the moment.” Mirror ensures that each feedback is personalized to each student, is relevant to the activity objective, and offers strategies to the student on how to improve their reflective skills.

Helping teachers uncover hidden learning gaps

But Mirror’s feedback loop doesn’t end when a student is finished reflecting at the device. Mirror’s AI technology works behind the scenes analyzing the responses and assessing various academic and social-emotional insights, such as mindset, sentiment, and understanding of the objective. Then Mirror’s analysis is posted directly to the teacher’s dashboard within 1 minute. Mirror uncovers hidden learning gaps which led Claxton teachers to realize that students were struggling with concepts they thought students understood. Jennifer says Mirror has been a “game-changer” for Claxton teachers and their students and they’ve only had it for one month. 

Try Mirror, commitment-free, with your students

Do you struggle to deliver timely feedback to students and feel like you’re always one step behind in understanding what they need to be successful? Spend more time building relationships with students and less time in red ink. Try Mirror with students in your class for free today!

The post Immediate feedback for every student, after every lesson appeared first on Swivl.

We’ve all had that colleague that we’ve gained so much learning from while teaching beside them. I wanted to scale that. I’m setting up Reflectivity so that every teacher has constant access to valuable professional growth.

Karen Fox | Crow Creek Tribal School

USE CASE

Increase district-wide communication and provide constant access to professional development

Karen Fox

Instructional Coach

School/District:

Crow Creek Tribal School

Grade Level

Multiple grades across 21 teachers

Karen Fox, an instructional coach for Crow Creek Tribal School District, in SD, is nearing retirement. She is adamant about ensuring the professional growth of her 21 teachers won’t be diminished with her departure — and with Reflectivity it won’t.

Reflectivity by Swivl has been Karen’s go-to solution for empowering educators she works with. Reflectivity supports self-reflection and peer learning that hinges on written resources, video observation, and a community platform to leverage both. “I’m not going to be here forever but I still want them to utilize this tool that I know will enable them to learn from one another.”

In her previous experience as a superintendent, Karen understands the value of creating a safe, judgment-free environment for teachers to observe and critique themselves. Reflectivity is where they can receive feedback and learn from each other’s strengths. As she puts it, “Despite how people typically feel when they watch themselves for the first couple of times, I know they’ll learn so much from getting into the habit.”

A universal bridge for the faculty 

Crow Creek Tribal School is located on tribal lands and unfortunately, the leadership turnover has been high. The impact of onboarding a new administration affects the entire institution and can slow professional development to a complete halt. Reflectivity bridges the gaps between administrative fluctuation by providing actionable insights generated by teachers for teachers. The end result is streamlined teacher support and more time to work with students. 

When turnover occurs, “we end up focusing a lot of attention on the adults that could be spent supporting the students,” Karen notes. Reflectivity creates more stability for her district. It provides continual and much-needed support on the administrative and teacher level. It is a resource for coaching, conversation, and goal achievement. Constant access to these resources reduces lost growth opportunities between in-person teacher coaching sessions while improving overall communication across the district. Reflectivity is an immediate method of assimilating knowledge for application inside the classroom.  

Fostering a dynamic, risk-taking environment is the key to reaping greater rewards at the district level. “We expect kids to take risks every day for us. But why are we not taking risks in our own practice to help them to grow?” Karen challenges. Reflectivity creates that safe space for vulnerability and experimentation, enabling teachers to continuously learn, adapt, and transform student outcomes.

Creating your Reflectivity plan

Want to see what Reflectivity can do for your institution’s Instructional Coaching? Schedule a consultation with the Swivl team to learn more.

The post Constant access to professional growth with Reflectivity appeared first on Swivl.

Swivl’s commitment to supporting our initiatives has opened up incredible possibilities for studying and strengthening math instruction across America’s rural schools.

Dr. Cynthia Carson | University of Rochester

USE CASE

Long-term data collection in higher education research

Dr. Cynthia Carson

Academic Program Coordinator

School/District:

University of Rochester

For math teachers in rural districts across the country, high-quality professional development opportunities can be few and far between. With limited resources and colleagues nearby, these educators often lack access to robust training programs focused on enhancing math instruction and improving student outcomes. Dr. Cynthia Carson, an education researcher at the University of Rochester, and her colleagues from the University of Idaho, recognized this challenge. As a project director, she and her team have made online instructional coaching central to their research work — Project SyncOn (Synchronous Online Video-Based Development for Rural Mathematics Coaches). Throughout this research and as Dr. Carson’s team expanded their projects, Swivl has played a prominent role.

Over the past eight years, the University of Rochester has secured two major 4-year grants from the National Science Foundation to design, implement, and study a fully online professional development learning program. “We wanted a model that could connect teachers from rural districts nationwide and provide them with top-notch training opportunities right from their classrooms,” explains Dr. Carson. “The key was finding the right video technology to capture high-quality footage and audio of instruction while enabling easy sharing and collaboration.” 

Dr. Carson and her team decided to partner with Swivl for the software and hardware solutions that could power their initiative. Using Swivl Robot’s tracking capabilities, teachers could effortlessly record their math lessons from anywhere, capturing crisp audio and wide angle views. These videos, automatically uploaded to Swivl’s secure cloud library Reflectivity, provided instant access for coaches and researchers. Prior to Swivl, Dr. Carson had teachers orchestrate recordings of their classes using traditional cameras, transfer video to flash drives, and mail those flash drives back to the university. Poor file compatibility, postal delays, and low video quality created hurdles for their program and threatened the effectiveness of their research.

“Swivl’s ease of use was a game-changer,” says Dr. Carson. “Teachers didn’t need extensive technical skills – they could just hit ‘record’ and knew the video would be high quality and readily available for their coaches to review. We needed something that was easy, because we didn’t want technology to be a barrier for us in terms of getting the data that we wanted.” 

Privacy matters

Swivl’s impact went beyond powerful recording capabilities. Its robust data privacy controls allowed Dr. Carson to tightly manage video access –  a crucial factor in gaining approval for her research from university ethical review boards. Dr. Carson even recalled meeting with Swivl co-founder Vlad Tetelbaum who worked closely with her team to ensure compliance and additional security criteria for her research. 

Throughout the years, Reflectivity has continued to support the evolving privacy requirements for this project. “To preserve the privacy of data, Reflectivity allowed me to create groups between a teacher and a coach. The only people that would have access to videos posted in these groups were the teacher, the coach, and the researcher who was approved to see the data.”

Robust research support

Swivl’s time-coded commenting feature drives coaching conversations. Instructional coaches are able to pause videos, leave contextual notes at precise moments, and engage teachers in guided discussions around specific teaching practices. “With Swivl’s technology, we could move our entire professional development cycle into the online space,” remarks Dr. Carson. “From discussing and modeling lesson plans to providing targeted feedback on implementation, everything became more seamless and impactful.”

With multiple cohorts spanning rural districts nationwide, Cynthia’s research has explored the immense value her video-based model has had improving math instruction in rural areas and building teacher capacity. And at the center of this transformative work is the power of Swivl’s technology, eradicating geographic barriers and facilitating cohesive data collection.

Supporting research with Swivl

Interested in learning how Swivl can support your research projects? Schedule a consultation with the Swivl team to learn more.

Disclaimer: The opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Acknowledgement: This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant Award 2006353. This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant Award 1620911. This work was supported by the University of Idaho.

The post Educational research now has no geographic barriers, thanks to Swivl appeared first on Swivl.

Students leave Mirror feeling empowered by its feedback because they pushed themselves beyond their comfort zone.

Julie Witczak | Deerfield Public Schools District 109

USE CASE

SEL, self-expression, self-improvement, confidence, motivation

Julie Witczak

Communication Media Arts Teacher (CMA)

School/District:

Deerfield Public Schools District 109, IL

Grade Level 7-8

At the end of a project, my students often turn in journals with reflections about their experiences. I have a hard time grading them because I know how hard they worked on these projects, but the journal entries just don’t represent their efforts. I wasn’t seeing the evidence of the work I knew they were capable of. They also often forget to journal daily or update their entries. They take their final work day to write the entire reflection and numerous things are missing or forgotten, so I end up with a lot of simple answers to complex questions.  

When I introduced Mirror for verbal reflection, students finally took the initiative to talk to it and they didn’t have to be reminded – they were excited to do it! Students also had a lot more to say when speaking rather than writing and Mirror’s personalized feedback makes them each feel individually heard. If I had conducted 1:1 verbal conversations with each student instead of Mirror, my entire class time would be spent listening and I wouldn’t have time to analyze their responses thoroughly or offer fair and accurate feedback.

Instead, through Mirror’s dashboard, I’m able to understand and address students’ immediate problems through their reflection scores. After each reflection they also get immediate feedback directly from Mirror, which they accept more readily because they don’t feel judged. Their reflections are now more detailed, exciting, and structured and the students actually apply the feedback in future assignments.

I’ve been inviting students to use Mirror as an option for every project. I had 5 students per class take me up on it during our first project and participation has tripled since then! Offering choice for using Mirror means students experience more enjoyment over their mandatory journal entries which were often hastily written and painful for them to finish. And as opposed to journaling which doesn’t give the students immediate feedback, Mirror engages them daily and they thrive on its feedback.

Some of my students have even begun to open up more. I’ve gotten to know them better by listening to their thoughts and expressions. Students leave Mirror feeling empowered by its feedback because they pushed themselves beyond their comfort zone.

I have one student in particular who asks me for her reflection score daily. For her, the score is a measure of her daily improvement. When she reflects with Mirror, the next day, her goal is to raise that number. It’s great to see she cares about working on these skills. 

I’m excited to take time over the summer to plan out my next steps with Mirror. I have a class I’ve looped with for two years. They will be 8th graders next year and they meet just once a week for only 27 minutes. I want to start the year with a set of SEL-focused questions and by the end of the year, I expect to have a full dashboard of responses about their experiences from the past three years they have been together. Then I’ll share their reflections with the incoming 6th graders who will start this class with me for the next three years. My current kids can share their struggles, challenges, and growth, and my future kids can hear words of wisdom from kids who have just graduated. I’m excited about this possibility!

I also advise the GSA (Gender Sexuality Alliance) at the middle school. I’m certain that Mirror will offer them a safe space to reflect on their identity journeys and how sharing their experiences may positively impact future students who join the organization.

I am so excited to see where Mirror will help me take my students next year and beyond!

Swivl Mirror demo

Want to experience the transformational effects of reflection with your students? Sign up to try Mirror for free for 30-days. During the demo your school will have dedicated support – from unboxing, personalizing Mirror for your goals, and anything else you may need to be successful with student reflections.

The post Helps students motivate themselves appeared first on Swivl.