FLO Tech Tool Tip: Making Meaning with Miro

Would you like to have more engaging presentations and meetings or a better tool for group collaboration? The FLO Tech Tool tip for May, brought to you by Jason Keddie, is Miro!

Post by Jason Keddie, instructional designer, Royal Roads University

Miro is an online collaborative whiteboarding platform that can be used for:

Presentations
Meetings
Brainstorming
Mind mapping
Designing
Researching
Flowcharting
Planning
Energizers
Feedback
And more!

Miro offers many templates to quickly get you started, including community-created templates that can be great to browse for new ideas. Participants can collaborate in your Miro board either synchronously or asynchronously without needing to create an account.

Participants can draw, highlight, type text, annotate, and add content such as documents, images, videos, links, and more. Miro’s infinite canvas allows participants to zoom in and out on the board, providing nearly unlimited space.

Facilitators can use Miro’s presentation mode to give presentations, stepping through frames of defined content. There’s a similar meeting mode that also moves board participants through the frames of content. The frames of content can include activities that go beyond simple annotations, providing a lot of potential for audience engagement. Facilitators also have access to tools such as a timer for timing participant activities, participant voting, and breakout frames, which split participants into groups with their own section of the board to work within.

When using Miro for the first time, it’s important to give students clear instructions. Some users may find navigating through the board for the first time overwhelming, especially if the board is heavily populated with content.

Miro offers an education plan that is freely available to many educators.

The following video provides a brief overview of some of the features of Miro. For more in-depth information, Miro Academy has excellent documentation and videos.

Note: Any tools recommended in this series should first be reviewed by your institution to ensure student privacy and protection.