Scenario: Interviewer: “Hi Ms. Prof. Trainer, please tell us about your opinions on education & PD tools of the future. Do you, personally, want to work out how you can customise and drive something new, reconfigure it along the way as you find new uses, and develop other skills for new markets, with options on future upgrades?” Silence. Int: “Please choose YES or NO.” Ms. T: “Um, not sure what you mean?” BLAHHHHHHRRRRP. Int: “Ah, soh-reee, WRONG answer. No business 4 U in 2020.”

I believe we can either choose now to celebrate new tools, remain able to connect with multiple tools, reach across generations and culture, or keep complaining about “gaps” in communication and blaming “others” for their age, culture, technical-expertise, preference to abandon some historical language tools…. Oh, go on, just take your pick and blame something. If you chose “No”, you will, anyway…

I love #4 (“it’s not designed for training”). No – Twitter is not designed for training as we know it today, however it is a fantastic tool to help trainers to facilitate informal learning. So many trainers have asked how they can take advantage of the over 75% of informal learning that takes place (as you talk about here http://marciaconner.com/intros/informal.html). Twitter is one of the best ways I have seen!

At Learning Putty I posted 5 ways trainers can use Twitter in “How to Use Twitter in Social Learning” (http://learningputty.com/2009/10/14/how-to-use-twitter-in-social-learning/). Perhaps those tips will be of use to some of your readers.

Again – GREAT article!