Tweet-writing has been made compulsory for media students at an Oz university. Is this pushing a fad too far?

Popular social networking site Twitter, which allows users to post micro-blogs of 140 characters to attract "followers", first gained international recognition when tweets were used to broadcast restricted information in the wake of Iran's recent presidential elections.

More recently, Congress candidate Shashi Tharoor kickstarted a controversy with his remarks about "cattle class" in one of his tweets.

Now, social-networking upstart Twitter has made the jump to academia, with tweet-writing being made a compulsory subject for would-be journalists at an Australian university.

Is this pushing a fad too far? Or is continued integration with technological trends the future of education worldwide?