…and one book to rule them all

Well, I don’t know if it is the one book to rule them all; however, here is an excellent resource.  It is a book dedicated to Web 2.0 technologies for educational purposes.  There are sections for elementary, administrators, ELL, and many more.  The best part about the book is it is a collaborations between a number of prominent education bloggers…and it is also free.  What free thing has ever been bad?  So, here is The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators (as I discovered from Richard Byrne’s excellent blog, Free Technology for Teachers)


The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators -

Zotero

Here is a recent write-up I did for a grad class about Zotero.  Zotero is a library-geek's dream tool.  At least I think it is.  I maybe a geek, but I am under-qualified to be a library geek.

1. Provide a general description of the site. 

                The site/service I reviewed is Zotero.  Zotero is a not a standard social networking site.  Its main purpose is to gather and collect research resources.  It is a bibliographic tool with a major focus on collecting information from scholarly articles.    

                Zotero works as a web browser add-on.  As a person searches and finds various resources on the Internet, Zotero can be used to capture these resources very easily.  On many researched-related sites like JSTOR, Zotero is integrated to gather all of the bibliographic information.  Zotero also works on numerous other websites, including Amazon.  Once the information is collected, it can easily produce bibliographies and many different formats (e.g., MLA, APA, etc.), as well as integrate as a citation managing application within Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer.  With Zotero, users can also attach notes and tags to documents.

                The social aspect of Zotero is that a user can create groups to share their collected information.  The groups have three different settings for privacy.  In the most open settings, any person can view the group’s resources and anyone can contribute.  In the most restrictive group setting, only members of the group can post and view the resources.

2. What do you like and dislike about the site and how could it be used? 

                What I like about Zotero is its single focus on managing scholarly resources and sharing them with others.  Zotero’s focus is on books, journal articles, and other resources for reference.  It integrates very nicely with Microsoft Word.  This makes it very easy to cite research in text, as well as inserting full reference lists.  It is very different from other social networking sites in that its social-ness is extremely limited to Zotero’s single function.  There are not any chat features, picture sharing, or Farmville within Zotero.  It is very focused.

I dislike some of the complicated features of Zotero.  It does take some time to learn.  I think that it was created from the perspective of a research librarian, so many of the features are comparable to traditional library searching, note taking, and cross-referencing.  I am sure that a person with a strong knowledge of library systems would find Zotero very easy to use.  My skills are more limited, so it has taken me some time to learn.

Overall, I think Zotero is an advanced tool that makes sense at the graduate or undergraduate level.  I think that it could be used in a high school setting, but I believe it would require a lot of support from the school’s library and media specialist.  That being said, it would be a perfect complimentary tool to use while learning about essential library research skills.

3. How could the site be used in a classroom setting?  (Make sure to identify an educational objective and curriculum area that the tool could be used in a distance education program.)

                I believe that Zotero could have two very important uses.  The first would be as the landing point for distance learning reference list.  Zotero utilizes a folder structure, so an instructor could create folders and subfolders of required and supplemental readings.  This could then be shared in a group format with the student.  There would be several benefits.  For the instructor, they could continue to modify and recycle the resource list from class to class.  If the resources were part of a system like JSTOR, full-text PDF articles would easily be available to the students.  This would probably be easier to manage in the long run than just using hyperlinks.  Another advantage would be that students and instructors would easily be able to cite and reference the material in any of their written activities without having to recreate the citation. 

                The second use of Zotero would be to collaborate on a group research project.  For example, if a group of students is working together to construct a research paper, proposal, etc., and they need to collect research articles to support their position, Zotero would be a great tool.  The students could independently collect articles and share among the group.  In addition to the bibliographic references, the group could also their notes on the various resources.