At the end of October the third edition of the first level Masters degree in Web communication and social media at the university of Parma will begin, confirming Italian interest in preparing young students to enter the 2.0 market. The one-year course is structured to train highly specialized students in writing skills and provide them with technical tools for the Web. The course focuses on teaching students the new form of online journalism.

Young people finishing the course become professional figures highly specialized in social media and mobile apps.  The course entails subjects like psychology of social media and creative wiring taught by field experts and university professors. Also, workshops in radio broadcasting, short clips and stop motions contribute in shaping all-round figures.

Throughout the course, students attend online tutorials, like those of Prof. Marco Valesi from the University of Merced-California in order to experience in first person the Web communication and become part of the global information circuit.

For all students it is mandatory to do a 350-hour internship at a company. This proves to be beneficial for both parties: on the one hand the students experience the corporate world; on the other, companies get the chance to receive useful suggestion for improving their web sites and redesigning in a more targeted way their social network profiles.

The specific knowledge about portals like Wordpress and Drupal turn out to be especially interesting for companies.

This year the University of Parma also launched "Sicily summer school 2.0", a ten-day intensive course set in the beautiful nature of Favignana, Sicily. The first five days, there are workshops where professional figures in the field of social media communication teach participants specific tools of the Web. During the last half of the course, attendants are to develop blogs and come up with e-commerce strategies to attract tourism and promote the local territories.

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