Tech Tuesday: Goodbyes, Twitter 101
UWereGoodWhileULasted: College news aggregator UWire has officially terminated its service, which makes College Ave a very sad camper.
The site was founded in founded in 1994, and since then has reposted content from more than 850 college media oulets, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Student editors were paid to search these oulets for news, and post them under categories that ranged from politics, to arts, to College Ave’s favorite: Science/Tech. Did it aggregate the best, most-hard hitting journalism? No. But it gave insight into what was going on at close to 1,000 higher ed institutions across the country, which never could have been done by a single editor or publication alone. UWire hasn’t given a reason for its sudden disappearance.
Goodbye, UWire. You were good to CollegeAve.
I wonder who’s going to jump on this void in the market ..
When you should take your money and run: Australia’s Griffith University has added a mandatory course on Twitter in it’s journalism curriculum. An entire course. (Let that settle). Personally I’ve never thought the social networking site was all that complex, but that puts me at odds with Griffith U. Professor Jacqui Ewart, who says “some students’ tweets are not as in depth as you might like.”
I have a secret for Ewart: Neither are the tweets from more than half of all twitter users. There will always be people who tweet that they had broccoli for dinner. It’s good to know how to use Twitter, but does that take 15 weeks? Abosolutely not Doubt it.
When I researched this story more, I found there was actually a point to the course: for students to tweet ongoing assesments of their own work. As the 340 first-year journalism students write and file news stories, according to an article in news.com.au, they are supposed to Tweet any struggles or problems they had with the assignment. It’s a good way to get the conversation going — but wouldn’t that be more productive in person?
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Feed for College Ave.