Teaching with Zotero Groups

Thanks, Zotero!

Via @Zotero we learn that Sean Takats, assistant professor of history at George Mason University, will be teaching with Zotero groups in his upcoming senior seminar course on the French Revolution. Prof. Stakats Takats provides a very interesting description of what he plans to do and why:

With their unprecedented collaborative functionality, Zotero groups promise to transform the way that instructors and students interact with sources, particularly in research-intensive classes. Although the Zotero groups functionality is already well-established – there are currently over 3200 public and private groups active at zotero.org – over the course of the semester I fully expect to discover areas where we could add or improve features, and I also look forward to refining how best to integrate Zotero into what passes for my pedagogy…

One of the things I like about this plan is that it requires students to show their work as the semester moves forward: as they add items to their research bibliography, the instructor and the other students are able to watch their progress. As I wrote yesterday, I believe there’s great value in having students show their work-in-progress to each other.

Because I realize that many readers might have only heard of Zotero without quite knowing what all the fuss is about, I’ve embedded this brief introductory video:

What possibilities do you see for using Zotero and Zotero groups in your courses?

Alternately, is your campus wired enough (and your students digitally savvy enough) to adopt such a teaching method?