Preeti Simran Sethi, William Allen White School of Journalism, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Classroom Without Borders Features Tweeting Cub Reporters

The NEA Foundation created its Challenge to Innovate (C2i) to discover innovative approaches in teaching and to enable educators to share and build on these ideas to improve student learning. Find out how C2i Mobile Project national awardee Preeti Simran Sethi is using mobile phone technology to change the way her students learn.

It is Preeti Simran Sethi’s conviction that “everyone has a story to tell,” including her students, and that education, in order to be relevant, must have real-world applications.  These twin beliefs are what drove her into journalism and education, and, along the way, gained her numerous awards and recognitions both nationally and internationally.  

By using microblogging platforms like Twitter, Sethi finds students in her “Classroom Without Borders” can report their stories from the inside out. After a Twitter tutorial, students are required to post (text, image and/or video) tweets inspired by their course curriculum. Students’ tweets are collected, collated, and shared, providing a digital record of what they understand and how they apply knowledge they learn in class.

“It gives all students an equal voice (including those reluctant to speak in class) and offers potential for global collaboration and connection,” she says. “It offers instructors useful feedback on the applicability of their knowledge transfer and helps optimize student engagement and learning.”

Sethi trusts students will be able to tell their own unique stories and shape their own education through the use of such technology and media platforms.

“Directed tweeting increases students’ responsibility for their learning by requiring them to learn the class material, seek out ways in which the material applies to the world at large, and then disseminate these insights in creative, concise and engaging ways.”