Web 2.0 is often referred to as the "Social Web". There are now many ways to share your thoughts with others on the web and to learn from others in a non-academic setting.

Blogs are electronic journals: websites allow users to create and maintain postings that include text, images and links to other sites or other blogs. Reading nurses' blogs is a great way to find out how other RNs and RN students are coping with personal and professional challenges. Nursing school lectures and textbooks can describe the professional ideal. Blogs, however, may give you some insight into the personal and real. Remember, information in a blog is not usually derived from evidence based research but rather on that author's personal thoughts and observations. Therefore, blogs are an appropriate source for conversation but not references in a research paper!

Twitter is a site that allows short text messages, "Tweets", usually personal updates, to be shared with the public or just with friends. "Tweets" can be searched by topic word (RN, nurse or nursing) to find out what others are saying about our profession.

Social bookmarking is a way to collect and share websites of particular interest. You may search these websites for lists of bookmarks - sites which other users have "tagged" (labeled) as referring to your topic. You might also sign in to create and share your own list of websites related to nursing or nursing school.

Picture sharing sites on the web allow you to share or search for pictures that have been tagged with a topic of interest to you. This is a fun way to search for vintage photos of nursing as well as uniforms from other schools.

And last but certainly not least is the (in)famous video sharing site youtube - the hub of the social web. Did you know that there are many informative nursing education lectures on line? Check it out!

• A great site for student nurses is CampusRN2RN with links to all sorts of interesting things for student nurses: blogs, groups, videos podacst and employers.
• Technorati is an internet search engine that allows you to search blogs by content or links. It also rates blogs and allows you to set up a watch list: technnorati will email you whenever your topic is mentioned in a blog.
• The American Journal of Nursing maintains its own list of blogs by and for nurses.
• Create your own no-cost blog at Blogger. While you may include nursing stories in your own blog: always remember to respect patient privacy. Nursing ethics tell us it is improper to reveal patient information, the federal government reminds us it is both illegal and punishable by fines. (HIPPA)
• Check out the nursing tweets at Twitter to see the 140 character maximum thoughts from nurses and about nursing.
• Search for websites tagged as RN, Nurse or Nursing at Delicious.
• Search for pictures tagged as nurse, RN or RN student at Flickr or Picasa.
• YouTube has many nursing lectures videotaped as well as three review lectures for the NCLEX exam.