On the other hand, if you're a new college student or returning for a few advanced classes, Zotero may be worth a longer look. Zotero has a pretty good home page which starts, "Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself." By being a Firefox extension or plugin, Zotero will work on Windows, Mac or Linux systems using Firefox. Additional plugins are available that allow Zotero to work with MS Word, OpenOffice or Neo word processors. As you check out the Zotero home page, note the Center for History and New Media and the George Mason Univ. logos at the bottom of the page. Somebody has thought long and hard about how to help young students write papers. Example? The interface mimics iTunes, something most college students already know how to use.While on the home page, at least click on the icons shown for "Collect", "Organize" and "Cite" which are three individual tasks that most of us are attempting to accomplish during the process of writing a paper. What blew me out of my chair was (1) how easy it is to add new material from web pages or material already in your computer such as video or PDFs and (2) the list of major styles and journal specific styles already built into the research tool! The format is either there or may be available with another plugin. The last two tools are more interesting from a class or teaching perspective. Tools are available to sync the information among multiple computers, share information within work groups and even publish dynamic bibliographies.
And like Steve Jobs, "...One more thing!" Please play the short video on the quick start guide's first page found at: http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide. The video may be the best summary of what Zotero can do that I've seen so far. The support pages contain other basic tutorials and videos, support forums, and a blog and you may want to bookmark the page for further reference if you decide to give Zotero a more serious try.If you've already got your own system for doing what Zotero does, God bless you and use what works for you. I may use some of my own time this Fall to see if I can catalog some of my own permanent references - some of the PDFs, videos and documents that I've collected over the past several years - and get to know Zotero a little better. At least I'm not working on a deadline.
And as for the UberStudent software, I plan to download UberStudent onto a live CD or even a spare computer and see what other new learning tools are available for advanced secondary or college-level students who use Linux. I might find other learning tools I'd like to explore. Maybe everyone currently in education already knows about Zotero which if so, only confirms my suspicion that I've been retired too long and should sit down and shut up. However, like so many other new technological tools, getting the word out about tools like Zotero to the small schools in the hinterlands always takes more time than anyone thinks. Not everything on the Internet can go viral and reach Mountainburg at the same time. We'd have a heck of a traffic jam on that little wire over the mountains!Update: 9/20/10 Lifehacker.com likes the UberStudent software CD. Kevin Purdy writes:
We suggested last week that, for many college students, a used laptop reloaded with Ubuntu is good enough. UberStudent, an Ubuntu installation loaded with student-friendly tools and customizations, is a smart pick for getting your actual school work done.To read the short Lifehacker review see: UberStudent Is an Ubuntu System Custom-Built for Students
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