Illinois’ DePaul University is teaching the first course ever to focus only on Twitter. It is called, “Digital Editing: From Breaking News to Tweets.” Our hope is that the course plans to curb rambling and superfluous information by teaching people to speak in sentences of 140 characters or less. Alas, “Digital Editing” is 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.” Craig Kanalley, a Chicago Tribune intern and “Digital Editing” professor, runs a website based on these concepts called Breaking Tweets, which gathers eyewitness twitter responses to breaking news. In an effort to save students money, we’re going to teach the course in a single tweet.
Type key words relating to important news stories in the search bar. Compile relevant tweets that react to the story. Boomshakala!
That was 131 characters.
And while we’re playing Teach, here’s what we think the syllabus should look like:
Do you think Twitter deserves a college course? Do you think you have the potential to ‘understand’ Twitter without the aid of a Tweecher? Leave your thoughts below! (140 Characters or less please.)