"Engagement in learning is critical. Often it is the difference between impact or irrelevance," said Terrence Wing of LiquidLearn in the August edition of Creative Training Techniques newsletter. Wing's article described practical training uses for Twitter in the training classroom.

Twitter can provide real-time feedback to the trainer. Have you ever had trainees complain to one another about the room temperature-but not inform the trainer? Some just suffer silently, not wanting to interrupt the instructor or are feeling too shy to initiate the contact. Twitter will also allow participants to make comments on the relevance of the material being covered or the confusion a topic might be creating. Twitter then allows the instructor or a monitor to address those issues. It's another way to create the "Ask-It Basket" for questions.

Twitter posts or "tweets" also can provide a direction for the conversation. In recent conferences I've attended, I've noticed how Twitter has provided a platform for some to take notes of the sessions they're attending while providing great training tips to those who weren't able to attend either that session or that conference at all. These tweets also open the opportunity to converse with people you've never met before but share similar interests in the given topic.

This year, our annual conference will be using Twitter for these reasons and more as another engagement tool. The hashtag we'll be using is #BPG10. We'll be monitoring tweets live outside of the sessions so you can see what comments are being made and tweet-up with those you may have connected with in the Twitterverse prior to the conference.

Twitter is also unique in the training world in that it can be a great place to get a quick and short answer. Where else is a trainer limited to only 140 characters?

If you want to become familiar with Twitter before the conference in mid-September or perhaps want to follow the tweets even if you're unable to attend, here are some of the key players at The Bob Pike Group on twitter.

You can find all of us at http://twitter.com. Create a free account and then you can search for us at the following usernames:

• Bob Pike, founder and chairman of The Bob Pike Group: @BobPikeCTT
• Becky Pluth, our vice president of training and development: @PluthB
• Scott Enebo, one of our experts and training consultants: @SEnebo
• Our corporate Twitter account which has training tips and more: @TheBobPikeGroup

If you don't want to create an account, but want to dip your training toes in the Twitter waters, you can view our tweets at http://twitter.com/TheBobPikeGroup and replace the information after the last backslash with the usernames listed above.