For schools with journalism programs, a student publication is almost as important as the classrooms that students learn in. It gives students a chance to get their work published and build a portfolio,

“ScribbleLive have been great in providing this world-class technology to us for free so we can allow our student journalists to compete with mass-media on the same level,” said Matthew Taylor, editor and founder of Elephant Student Media. Taylor created the publication while attending the University of London, which remains independent from the school.

“As students, we’re very forward-thinking when it comes to media and we definitely think that ScribbleLive is focusing on exactly the kind of journalism readers want: interactive, conversational, unobtrusive, and constantly rolling.”

The publication gained attention last year for covering a large march against spending cuts, stressing the importance of immediate reporting. They continued to use ScribbleLive to cover both London University’s Queen Mary Student Union Elections and London Fashion week. While the former focused more on rapid-fire text reporting, the fashion week reporting allowed the team to take outside tweets to aid in their coverage, importing images along with them.

The experience with covering these events enables student journalists to practice their craft and transition these skills into the real world.

“We’ve now begun to instigate a live newsroom to interact with reporters on the ground and pull social content for student journalists to then respond to, which makes us first to new information,” Taylor said. “It provides an invaluable opportunity to work at the same level as national media, and be taken as seriously.”