Tweet your Homework

The end of summer and beginning of fall is often a time for new-- new notebooks, new pencils, new back-to-school shoes, new teachers, new classes. And this year at DePaul University, students are also offered something new that I think has great potential: a journalism class devoted to Twitter. The course, which is apparently the first college class ever to be devoted entirely to the social networking and micro-blogging platform, is called “Digital Editing: From Breaking News to Tweets.”

"Digital Editing: From Breaking News to Tweets, is really about learning how to make sense of the clutter of the Web, particularly in situations of breaking news or major developing stories, and how to evaluate and verify the authenticity of reports by citizen journalists," says Craig Kanalley, a Chicago Tribune digital intern who is teaching the class. Part of the focus of the class will be evaluating and verifying material produced by citizen journalists-- just what the world of journalism needs!


Would you take this class? Is this class beneficial for the modern journalist or just succumbing to entertainment as media?