The ease of using MIRO for planning in Senior Sos

My level 3's have been using MIRO as part of the assessment.  They need to collaborate on a campaign of Social Actions which meant planning and discussing how to run the campaign.  I asked a few students who were working on a MIRO what their thoughts were on the platform.  Here is the interview below (please turn it up as the sound isn’t great).

Using MIRO to connect my year 9's to each other

We are learning about our community and as part of this, I wanted to try a mapping activity where students could point out where they lived and create a short blurb about their household.

I tried to figure out if we could insert an interactive map into MIRO that could be zoomed in and out but I couldn’t figure it out.  So I took multiple screen shots of our local area around school, and put them together in a MIRO like a jigsaw.  I then locked it in so it couldn’t be moved.  Although it took awhile to put together, I enjoyed the challenge.  

While we were on the MIRO, I encouraged the students to try and use the video chat but they didn’t appear to want which was fine.  I found zooming in and out of the MIRO awesome because zooming in allowed the students to find their street, even their house and zooming out let us see how far kids lived away from school and how near and far they were away from each other. I enjoyed seeing the kids working in MIRO in real time as their names were the cursor so I could direct them to go to the school grounds etc which was cool.  I will definitely be sharing this activity with my department and my other classes (below is a short video of me showing them what to do in the MIRO).

The completed MIRO

Year 13's collaborating on a MIRO using the video conference tool

Our year 13's have been working in groups to collaborate over their assessment which requires them to work in groups.  We held a google hangout to connect with the class and to let them have time to work on their MIRO boards in a separate google hangout.  I asked one group to get into to their MIRO boards and start using the chat function to connect whilst I tried to create a separate google hangout for them on my calendar.  

After I created the hangout, I went into their MIRO board and noticed that one of the group had invited me to join the chat.  I accepted the invite and low and behold, I was in a video call with the team as part of the MIRO!  I did not even know there was a video chat feature available!

Me in the chat in the middle of the MIRO

The students didn't know that I had joined the video chat at first and I funnily heard one of them say to the other 'why is Ms here?' to which I laughed out loud.  When I turned my mike on, I said 'hellloooo' and there were a few gasps.  Then I told them 'someone said why is Ms on here' to which they started to blame each other for who said it.  One finally owned up saying 'I said it Ms caused we weren't prepared and only want you to see our work when finished'. 

What I noticed was that video was a lot clearer then a google hangout and we were able to work on the MIRO whilst we live chatted. It made sense to have a live video feed going whilst we were collaborating right on the document!  The students who did not come to the hangout actually turned up to the MIRO which I was surprised at.  I wondered if they did not feel comfortable or confident so I will check in with them before our next class.  So I've decided, instead of getting the students to join a google hangout first, they will go directly to their MIRO's and work collaboratively on their projects using the awesome video tool on the MIRO.

Using MIRO with my year 13's just before lockdown

My year 13’s started their last internal assessment last week ‘Examine personal involvement in a social action(s) that aims to influence policy change(s)’ worth 6 credits.  Students need to work in groups to complete the assessment.

After organising their groups, they began by looking at a social issue they were interested in to focus on, and had to create an argument as to why this would be an important issue for them to pursue.  The next step was to brainstorm what social actions they could do as part of their assessment. Usually we would have the students collaborate on a document and in the past they would be linking relevant information all over the place.  We found that students couldn’t keep a good track of where their work was and it tended to be messy and disorganised. 

My colleague suggested we taught our kids to use MIRO as the platform for collaboration and it made sense.  It would be one space for them to collaborate on without having to search and find documents and links in their individual drives to their one document. 

Here is a recording of me attempting to teach the year 13’s how to use MIRO before lockdown.

Once each group created their own MIRO, my co-teacher and I talked about templates they could use to organise their planning and create a to-do list.  I would still like to create a common template for them all, although we went into lockdown and we missed the chance in person to do that.  Hopefully the groups will use it during lockdown! (Below are some screenshots of how two groups of students started to use MIRO in class).