On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs reached into his pocket and pulled out the future.1 The day he introduced the iPhone he ignited a revolution that is still changing everything. Putting a computer connected to everyone and the entirety of the world's knowledge in every pocket has permanently and irrevocably changed humankind.

In the past 20 years, a variety of social media platforms have significantly changed how we interact, communicate, learn, and engage. Social media use by physicians and physicians in training has expanded dramatically and evolved in recent years. Here, we focus on the use of Twitter by medical professionals (#medtwitter) and analyze Twitter's role as a new tool for learning, teaching, networking, professional development, mentorship/sponsorship, and advocacy within medicine. We discuss principles of adult learning theory to support the effectiveness of the use of Twitter as an educational tool, and share best practice pearls as well.

Journal clubs have existed since William Osler started them in the 19th century, and serve as an important avenue for critical appraisal of medical research in academia. In the past decade, particularly the past 5 years, there has been a proliferation of online journal clubs on Twitter (Twitter Inc, San Francisco, CA). These Twitter-based journal clubs have used the conversational nature of the medium and the focus allowed by specifying a hashtag to bring critical appraisal to the wider community. Currently, there are 27 active Twitter-based journal clubs. NephJC is one such online, Twitter-based, nephrology-focused journal club. NephJC has been active since April 2014. We describe elements of NephJC and the participation over the past 135 sessions. Apart from critical appraisal, these journal clubs allow for archived and searchable postpublication peer-review, and are a crucial element of building an online community. They are one of the myriad ways in which social media is changing medicine and medical education.

Twitter appears to stimulate learners preconceptions, potentially allowing for engagement with new material and enhanced learning. It also provides an opportunity to re-expose learners to basic science concepts that often decay during their training. In addition, individual Twitter feeds are cited as enhancing the education of internal medicine residents.

Podcasts, portable digital audio files that usually are listened to on a smartphone or MP3 player, have become a potent medium for medical education. Medical podcasting has become more sophisticated over the past decade as the producers of this material experiment and adapt the format. At the same time, production of podcasting has shifted from being a part of traditional medical educational venues such as journals and medical school curricula to organic digital education, individuals operating outside of, or parallel to, the traditional medical educational system. The past several years have seen increasing attempts to evaluate and organize podcasting material into vibrant educational resources. This article describes the history of podcasts, prior work on its efficacy in medical education, research directions for the future, and a vision of a global podcasting curriculum.

Medical online newsletters are an important component of communication between learners and educators. The ease of creation and distribution has broadened the appeal and growth of online formats. This manuscript details the history of the modern newsletter as it relates to the nephrology community. From historical listservs to content-rich emails and blogs, the creative newsletter formats are changing to meet the demands of readers. With continued expansion of online education and access, this communication format can continue to meet the needs of virtually focused world.

A visual abstract is a graphic summary of a study designed to enable readers to process key methods, findings, and conclusions rapidly. This allows readers to preview the article and decide if it is worth pursuing further. Similar to the text abstract, it is not a substitute for reading the full article. Its succinct format and attractive design make a visual abstract ideal for sharing on social media, thereby allowing journals and authors to promote published articles, and to facilitate discussion through tweets, blog posts, journal clubs, and scientific meetings. Guidelines for creating a visual abstract are available, but maintaining an acceptable standard remains a challenge. Visual abstract editors may be helpful in ensuring quality.

With a growing need to recruit the future nephrology workforce, medical educators and members of the nephrology community are turning to innovative approaches to improve communication and stimulate dialogue in the field. One feasible strategy is the use of electronic collaboration tools such as Slack (Slack Technologies, San Francisco, CA), which facilitates real-time conversational communication in a private or semiprivate virtual workspace. The potential uses of Slack for nephrology education, research collaboration, and community building are outlined in this overview.

Advances in information technology have changed human interactions. These changes have had considerable implications for nonmedical and medical educational practices. The use of semi-private applications such as WhatsApp (Mountain View, CA), Slack (Canada), Viber (Israel), and Google Hangouts (Mountain View, CA) has not been well studied in nephrology education. In this narrative review, we review the literature on the use of these communication applications in medicine and nephrology education. Although many of these applications might be used currently in nephrology, there is little published data regarding the use of WhatsApp in nephrology fellowship. Given the easy accessibility of these communication applications by our learners in medical school, residency, and fellowship, the use of such applications can enhance nephrology education.

Free open access medical education (FOAM) has disrupted traditional modes of knowledge translation and dissemination. These are popular resources with a wide educational reach. Nephrology has been a leader in FOAM, but many skeptics still question the accuracy and reliability of this content. Recently, quality-assurance techniques have been developed to address these concerns. These techniques may be helpful for readers to appraise the online literature and for institutions to reward the production of high-quality open educational resources. We performed a rapid review of the literature. A medical librarian conducted a systematic search of the Medline and Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature databases. Two independent assessors screened and selected articles, performed a hand-search of reference lists, and scored articles on their quality using the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument. Thirteen reports were included for the final descriptive analysis. We identified 10 quality-assessment techniques, and 4 of them having been validated. The quality of the reports was fairly high, with an average Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument score of 11.5 of 18 (SD, 2.3; range, 7.25-14.25). The calculated Cronbach α was 0.85. There is burgeoning literature on the topic of critical appraisal of open educational resources, and, more specifically, FOAM resources. Many of the techniques used are of varying quality and developed with different intended uses and audiences. By continuing to refine these tools, we can continue not only to support and legitimize the FOAM movement, but also foster individual critical appraisal skills that increasingly are necessary in this age of information.

The significant growth of social media use by the medical community, including nephrology, has led to a need to equip health care professionals with the mentorship, knowledge, and tools to use these platforms both effectively and professionally. Social media is free and accessible to almost anyone with a computer or mobile device, which not only has revolutionized the dissemination of information, but also has created a venue for unprofessionalism and missteps. This article describes the Nephrology Social Media Collective internship, a 12-month, mentored training program during which selected interns participate in a curriculum of lectures, activities, and projects that aim to increase their knowledge, proficiency, and confidence in the use of social media. The goal of the internship is to train participants to acquire modern communication skills that are not taught in traditional medical training, and leverage these to become leaders in medicine. The structure of the internship, application process, and educational components, along with areas for improvement and future directions, are discussed.