Zotero F/OSS Project

Zotero - 

For my final Project in ETEC 697, it was important to me to develop a project that not only would satisfy the requirements of the course but would be personally meaningful. In order to do this it was necessary to find a free and open source application that both provides a service that is valuable for myself as well as being a solution that would provide a significant service to K-12 educators.

Z OTERO is a free and open source online referencing, bibliographic, and collaborative application that I have used extensively over the last few years. I believe very strongly that Zotero integrates and performs its functions better than any proprietary solution that is available.

On the Zotero “get involved Zotero” page, < http://www.zotero.org/getinvolved/ > there are a number of suggestions of ways for one to become involved with the project. These range from suggestions that involve very specialized knowledge such as developing a plug-in or contributing code to the project. Under the get involved section titled document and support, there are 2 suggestions that I believe will be useful not only to myself, but potentially to other educators in the Hawaii Department of Education.

I would like to do both of these because spending time with the first would give me a better idea of  some of the potential questions and difficulties that will arise from the second part.

Edit the wiki:

there are 3 main wiki sections, the start page, the developers section, and the knowledge base section. I have created a wiki account and have logged in and I propose to try to assist in editing the knowledge base. I will be looking at forum questions and trying to create or to clarify entries that address those questions. In addition, I will be looking at the other sections in the wiki and will be trying to add and clarify in the areas where I think I will be of the most use.

Implement Zotero at your institution:

for the other part of my project I hope to “develop institution specific documentation” that will help me facilitate the adoption Zotero by teachers and ultimately by students at my high school worksite. I believe Zotero has the potential to be extremely valuable to professional educators as they pursue their own academic and professional development goals as well as in their professional duties in the high school setting. One of my goals is to try to guide teachers in helping prepare their students for success in higher education and in using the collaborative aspects of Zotero in their specific content areas.