I honestly wish I found this one 4 months ago.
How do you not loose your mind in the search for research? How do you gather your online resources for research and have them automatically ready for bibliography and in text citation? Zotero!
“ Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.”
www.zotero.org
It was with great delight to find this Web 2.0 tool. It has so many features. Some them include automatically capture citations, remotely back up and sync your library, store pdfs, images, and web pages, take rich-text notes in any language, and uses thousands of bibliographic styles. As teacher-researchers this tool is worth the download. So instead of just storing those tools on bookmarking lists, virtual notebooks, or Word, Zotero will handle everything you grab from the web right into its browser tray.
I feel that is Web 2.0 tool comes with an impressive resume. Its sponsors are The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library services. It was created by the Center for History and New Media and George Mason University. And if that doesn’t satisfy its validity as a worthwhile tool, make note that the National Science Foundation has hired Zotero “o provide a customized interface for NSF’s internal use” (zotero.org).
I’ve not mastered its use, but am in self-training mode as I place my Ebscho searches in Zotero. Who wants to remember how to write a reference? I know I’ve never liked it since learning MLA in high school (which was also a self teaching experience). Does it make sense in the digital age to require manual acquisition of bibliographic information? I think not. Just Zotero!
I am with you Deirdre. I feel very strongly that soon users will be able to right click on images, photos, articles and receive an APA/MLA + options for proper citation formats.
ReplyDeleteI just had this conversation with one of our English teachers last week. She was questioning me about allowing students to use electronic sources such as Citation Machine, Bibme.org, NoodleTools4, Easy Bib, Destiny, etc. for bibliographies. My response to her concern was why not? We use calculators to help us get the answers in math. To me it is the same. I feel the important message is to cite the source, not memorize the format. It is important that students automatically recognize the creator and give credit where credit is due. I feel there are other more important things like verifying the information as valid and reliable. Why not use a tool to help properly cite sources.
This is a very amazing tool. I can think of the obvious use for me with my action research project, but there are so many uses in my class as well.
ReplyDeleteMy district requires our 6th grade students to do a research project comparing the two different ancient civilizations we cover and citing their sources. I can't tell you how many times my students have gotten to the end of their project and forgotten to cite their work. This usually leads to tears or a feeling of being overwhelmed. I will definitely share this with my students and we will be using this come spring time when we start our research. Thanks for sharing this tool with us!!