(Updated on 9/13/2010 @ 6:31 p.m. with correct info for classes offered by Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.)

It’s September and kids from kindergarten to college are headed back to the classroom.

This time of year, that back-to-school feeling is hard to escape, even if you finished your formal education years ago.

So why not just go with it, and sign up for a class or two to improve your skills and help your writing business.

Here’s a list of places that offer writing or other classes online; some are open only to members, which means you’ll need to subscribe to that professional organization in order to sign up.

Knight Digital Media Center - This journalism training partnership between USC Annenberg and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism offers some online training materials in support of the week-long on-site seminars the schools run for working journalists. Categories include reporting, audio, video, photography, and more.

Knowledgewebb – Online training site Knowledgewebb focuses on training journalists about the tech tools they need to do their jobs, and not just to work for digital publications. Subjects range from basics such as math for journalists to planning your first multimedia story to more sophisticated subjects including content management systems, databases and getting more traffic to your website or blog. To see what you’re getting for your money, Knowledgewebb offers four sample classes you can take for free, including 50 Ways to Improve Your Blog and Workflow for Online Editorial Content. Classes are available to members only. Annual subscription is $129 a year, although generous discounts are available to members of affiliate organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists, Online News Association, ReligonWriters.com, Freelance Success and others.

Mediabistro – The virtual community for freelancers runs online and on-demand courses and webinars, and offers one of the greatest range of topics out there, including staples such as Bootcamp for Journalists and Travel Writing Boot Camp. Mediabistro has literally dozens of courses slated to start in in the next couple weeks – but don’t worry if you miss the one you want, it’s bound to repeat sometime in the not too distant future. Some online classes are under an hour, others last several hours and others span the course of several weeks. Costs vary. Subscribers to Mediabistro’s AvantGuild inner circle get discounts on classes, but classes are open to all.

News University – This e-learning program is run by Poynter Institute, the non-profit journalism training organization that also owns and publishes the St. Petersburg Times. In addition to online training, News U. also offers webinars and in-person training, and you don’t need to be a member of any particular organization to sign up. Right now, News U. is asking freelancers to participate in an online survey to come up with subjects for a series of online writing webinars the organization plans to launch in 2011; participating writers get 50 percent off registration for one webinar plus $10 off an online class on stopping writer’s block that takes place this Thursday, Sept. 16.

Online News Association – This professional organization for staff and freelance digital journalists at all kinds of publications doesn’t offer much of its own online training, though members receive discounts on classes from News U. and Knowledgewebb. However, the group plans to use some of the $75,000 in grant funding it received recently to expand its own online training. If you live in Washington D.C. or plan to be there in late October, don’t miss ONA10, the organization’s annual conference, which crams as much digital-media training into two days as you could possibly hope for. In case you need more convincing, here’s a recap from last year’s conference.

Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism – The seven-year-old business journalism training program says 9,000 writers have taken its courses. The center, physically located at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, offers a variety of live and on-demand online training – all focused on how to do a better job of covering a business beat. Upcoming webinars include: Developing Business Angles on Any Beat (Sept. 14) and Think Like Google: What You Need to Know about SEO (Oct. 19).

Writer’s Digest University – The online training branch of Writer’s Digest Magazine offers training for writes in all genres, including magazine writing, fiction, poetry and technical writing. The next sets of multi-week, online workshops begin Sept. 16 and 23. Right now anyone who signs up for a workshop gets a free WD on-demand webinar on DIY publishing.

But I can’t do Twitter. At least not yet.

There’s only so many hours one person can devote to online social networks, and only so many social networks to keep track of, and right now, I’m drawing the line at Twitter.

Call it social network overload. Using social networks is a great way to stay connected with friends and colleagues. And as I’ve written before, it’s helped me find sources and led to writing assignments. But it’s easy to cross the line from awesome productivity tool to awful time suck.

A lot of writers I know have joined Twitter, the micro-blogging site where you write “tweets” about work or life in 140-letter increments and sign up to read other people’s posts. Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist blogger, is a fan. So are a couple dozen of the freelancer writers I hang out with at Freelance Success, the subscription-based message board for professional writers. Some writers use it to help promote their books or blog. Jen Miller, a New Jersey freelance writer and author of The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May: Great Destinations: A Complete Guide: Including the Wildwoods explains how she’s using Twitter to promote the book in this article on Mediabistro.com, the Website for freelancers (NOTE: You need to be a Mediabistro member to read the story).

I already spend at least an hour a day on my social networks and this blog. I can’t see how I could add Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, GoodReads, RedRoom, or any of the half-dozen social networks people have invited me to join without cutting into the time I spend doing other work, like researching and writing articles.

Researching this, I found posts dating back to 2004 from blogger complaining about social network overload. The names of the social networks may have changed since then, but it’s the same problem. It’s also an issue some of the best-known minds in the business are grappling with. If you have 55 minutes and $15 to spare, you can hear what Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson thinks about the future of social networks and the media in this video clip from the recent Mediabistro Circus conference.

No doubt there are tools out there that could help me streamline my social networking activities – if anyone knows of good ones, let me know. Eventually, I could change my mind and join Twitter or GoodReads. For now, call me a Luddite, Twitter challenged or just plain behind the times. I’m happy with the social networks I have, but no more.

Jane is Jane Boursaw, and she’s the creative force behind a package of entertainment industry writing ventures that includes weekly and monthly syndicated columns, blogs and her Website, Reel Life with Jane. She’s such a hit, this week Mediabistro.com ran a profile of Boursaw*, calling her a “blogging blockbuster.” (*You need to be a Mediabistro AvantGuild member to read the entire profile.)

One thing novice freelancers hear a lot is how important it is to find a niche or establish a beat. Boursaw is an excellent example of someone who’s done that – and then some.

Five years ago, Boursaw had a typical freelance career writing stories on a piecemeal basis. According to the Mediabistro Q&A written by E. B. Boyd, Boursaw had an “aha” moment and decided to focus her writing efforts on her life-long passion for movies and TV. She started writing family-friendly movie reviews and slowly built up a stable of publications that bought them on a weekly or monthly basis. Today, Boursaw’s reviews are syndicated in more than 300 publications nationwide. She also maintains five blogs, including Film Gecko, which she writes for B5 Media, a Toronto new media network that operates more than 325 paid blogs.

If that’s not enough, Boursaw writes celebrity profiles for in-flights and other magazines, including a recent profile of Hayden Panettiere for Latitudes.

Boursaw’s secrets: she works hard, markets constantly, has a professionally designed Website that she updates constantly. She’s a regular on a variety of freelance writer message boards, including Freelance Success. And she lives about as far away from Hollywood as you can get, in Traverse City, Michigan, with her husband and two kids.

Bravo Jane!

Mediabistro.com is offering three new, short classes on starting a writing-related blog as part of its Crash Course series of mini-seminars. Classes are online and on demand, so you sign up and watch when you can. “How to Start a Blog” features blogger and Mediabistro writer David White, who covers getting started, creating content, domain names and tools for bloggers. The class is 14 minutes long and costs $15, or $12 if you’re a Mediabistro AvantGuild preferred member.

A two-part series, “How to be a Blog Star” Part I and Part II, feature prominent writers including Brian Williams, with NBC Nightly News, and Brian Stelter, who writes the The New York Times TV Decoder blog, discussing topics such as why they started blogging, how they established their niches and how blogging can lead to other work.

Once you sign up for an on-demand class you have access to it for 30 days. Each comes with an area for taking notes, plus a class outline and links to resources. Free previews are available too. If you’re interested in learning more about blogging, online video and other Web tools, Mediabistro has a variety of other on-demand classes you can check out here.

If you’d rather not shell out $15 to watch a video, there are plenty of free resources online. Here’s a collection of posts I’ve written about blogging for freelance writers:

10 reasons freelance writers should have a blog
Best blogs for writers
How to write great blog posts
Writing blog posts: plotted out or on the fly?
What freelance writers should know about SEO
Tips for improving traffic to your blog
10 basic Web tools for writers