An interesting and useful resource for faculty, SlideShare, is available at http://www.slideshare.net/. This website indicates it is the "world's largest community for sharing presentations," allowing both individuals and organizations to upload presentations and users to tag, download or embed these available presentations. Persons creating and managing SlideShare provide an array of technological expertise. The site has a Designated Copyright Agent, a copyright policy, and notes that the submissions are not screened by the site managers. The site posts Terms of Use and Community Guidelines. You will be asked to provide your email address to register for the site.

"Health" is a specific category of submissions on the homepage; other categories include technology, business, education, gadgets, entertainment, and photos. Topics of interest to nursing faculty posted on the Health site include septic shock, good study skills, knee ligament injuries, acute cholecystitis, and sinusitis. Also, several submissions showed information for specific assignments, with embedded links to other sites. Presentations related to Social Technology are interesting and informative.

Nursing faculty can individually determine how best to use this site. SlideShare provides a free and open mechanism for us to share our work with students and others. Of course each of us will need to evaluate r copyright concerns, privacy issues, etc. Still, one more open source tool increases our repertoire of social technologies appropriate for today's nursing student.

Source: SlideShare: Present Yourself. Available athttp://www.slideshare.net/. Accessed June 1, 2009.