professional development Archives - Swivl https://www.swivl.com/tag/professional-development/ Wed, 26 Jun 2024 18:44:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 97173492 Introducing MirrorTalk.ai https://www.swivl.com/2024/06/25/introducing-mirrortalk/ Tue, 25 Jun 2024 21:23:47 +0000 https://www.swivl.com/?p=88986 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 […]

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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.

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Reflectivity makes good teaching contagious https://www.swivl.com/2024/06/21/reflectivity-makes-good-teaching-contagious/ Sat, 22 Jun 2024 03:40:38 +0000 https://www.swivl.com/?p=88904 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 […]

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To provide a district-wide professional development resource

Danieli Parker

School/District:

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.

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