More on E-books – 10 options

Today I have been looking at more e-books. The sites I looked at were mostly offering text downloads and many offered free options. This is not a complete or definitive list but they are the ones I like, were easy to access and I especially liked those that could add something extra eg annotating and commentating and some offer more for a reading group discussion/study. Our students all have laptop computers and I would confidently say they also all have a smaller mobile device - most often in the form of  iPods or iPhones. I am not saying they all like to read off their devices but it is becoming a much more common occurrence. There are also  those who are not great readers of hard copy books who do prefer the electronic format. I have recently been given a kindle to use and it is really very easy to read from and a convenient size for carrying around. There is so much becoming available and our school library must look at how best we can connect our students to reading and literature. E-books are one answer.

The Book Glutton video: This video offers a short overview about how BookGlutton works: how to find and read books, how to use the community features and how to set up your own profile. It was updated for 2010

• BookGlutton Read books online then annotate and/or discuss them with others. You can sign up for an account and make some decisions about what you’d like to read and who you’d like to read it with. You can either choose a book from our public domain collection, or choose a group that’s reading something you like. Then you just jump into the reader.
• DailyLit This is a free service that brings books (also free) (particularly classic books in the public domain) as excerpts, into your inbox in convenient small messages that can take less than 5 minutes to read. This is not just an option for your computer, it also works perfectly well on whatever PDA you may have. Sometimes there’s a small charge for the e-book (usually a modern book) but there are plenty in the free category.
• Google Books Google are working on an agreement that will offer access to 3 categories of books. 1. Out-of-copyright books: This agreement doesn’t affect how out-of-copyright book are offered. Book Search users can read, download and print these titles. 2. In-copyright but out-of-print books Out-of-print books aren’t actively being published or sold so it can be hard to find copies held in a library or used bookstore. When this agreement is approved, every out-of-print book that they digitize will become available online for preview and purchase, unless its author or publisher chooses to “turn off” that title. 3. In-copyright and in-print books: In-print books that publishers are still actively selling. This agreement expands the online marketplace for in-print books by letting authors and publishers turn on the “preview” and “purchase” models that make their titles more easily available through Book Search.
• International Children’s Digital Library The ICDL Foundation’s goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world. Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children’s literature from the world community. The simplest way to use the ICDL is to just read a book. Pick one of the featured books from the home page or search for books using one of the search mechanisms. The reader can then read – for free and anonymously. You can also create an account to keep a bookshelf of books you like and set various personal preferences.
• Internet Archive Text Archive Download free books and texts. The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children’s books, historical texts and academic books. This collection is open to the community for the contribution of any type of text, many licensed using Creative Commons licenses.
• Planet eBook Classic literature in PDF format.. Free eBooks to download
• Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, the founder of P/G, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.
• Project Gutenberg Australia   This site produces books in electronic form and makes them freely available to the public in accordance with Australian copyright law, usually in plain text. Hosts a number of specialised Australian collections, including a Library of Australiana, Australia’s Greatest Books., Australian Explorers & Australian History.
• Read Easily Uses Project Gutenberg and is aimed at the visually impaired, this web site allows you to change the fonts and colours to make the books more legible.
• World Public Library Use the eBook Finder to find the PDF eBook you are looking for and download free books and texts. The World Public Library Association Collection shelves more than 750,000 PDF eBooks in more than 100 languages. The mission of the World Public Library’s Acquisition Department is to add new eBooks 24/7 to the shelves. The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children’s books, historical texts and academic books. This collection is open to the community for the contribution of any type of text, many licensed using Creative Commons licenses.

 World Public Library video

Audio book options

Uploaded from Flickr by Colleen AF Venable

Audio books are becoming more important/useful in many ways. It does not have to be sight-impaired students that benefit from audio books. We have students who have trouble with reading for a variety of reasons but who are perfectly capable of understanding and assimilating the spoken word. Many students enjoy listening to a book being read or there are those who have long journeys to get to school or who have training runs. Many use their portable device (be it iPod or others) already to break up the boredom so why not still listen to a podcast of a book reading.  It is a way of using otherwise “down-time” as reading time.

There was an interesting article in the Age Greenguide last Thursday about Bolinda Audio Books. Entitled “Telling stories to the world” the history of this company was outlined in terms of their development into a thriving audiobook company.

I remember buying a number of the Large Print titles for a vision impaired student from the earlier version of the company. In some respects it does not seem all that long ago but I must admit that I have become a much bigger fan as they have developed the audio book business, especially when I drive out into the country areas and I am faced with 3-6 hour drives.

Bolinda has become a large audio book publisher with a great  line up of authors and titles, especially Australian, and they are also beginning to offer simultaneous releases of audio books. This has been a boon to me as I want to “read” the new titles as I introduce them into our library. I am always trying to keep on top of the current literature and this is a great way for me to “read” a number of titles. I have also tried a few audiobooks for my iPod and it is very easy it is to download/use their MP3CD’s.

I have yet to investigate Bolinda digital which is a fairly recently decided to offer an option that will enable libraries to offer eAudiobooks to its library customers from its Library’s website. This will enable users to download time-limited version of the novel. How and if I can make use of this in a school library is yet to be seen, but I am interested.

There are also options for free books as well. If a teacher decides to study a book that is in the public domain, they can access the text from the ManyBooks.net site. ManyBooks has public domain books already formatted for various handheld devices.

Another advantage is that if you download a book for an iPod, for instance, Manybooks can provide it in iPod notes format. The text is divided into various files and each file is linked to the file that comes before it and the file that follows it. This is done because there is a limit to the number of characters allowed in one iPod notes file but no limit to the number of “notes” files than can be uploaded to an iPod. The user can then  access the text and audio of a book at the same time from the same device whenever they want to. I do not like reading from small screens but the iPad will change this.

Mp3 files can be downloaded and uploaded to handheld devices just like music is uploaded. If we want free books another option is LibriVox. This site hosts free public domain audiobooks that are read by volunteers. The quality of voice varies but it is still a good option.

From Fiction Focus there comes another audio option – in the form of podcasts. Entitled “Listen Up”, this sounds like an interesting idea and I plan to check it out tonight.

Audiobook Community is a US-based ning. The largest of its groups (104 members) is called Sync: YA Listening. During the months of July and August, the group is offering two free audio downloads each week to support the summer reading programs held by many school and public libraries in the US. Administrator Kirsten Cappy is still fine tuning the list, but here’s a glimpse. She is playing with pairing modern and classic books.

We are fortunate to have many options to enable us to give our students a gateways into literature. The above options only scratch the surface.

Ebook on offer

Over the past few months I have been thinking about ebooks and considering a number of questions. Some of these include: What is available? What is easy to obtain and read? How will they be read? What format? What is offered to the Australian market? (At the moment the Australian options are quite limited. So much that is available in the US is not available to us in Australia. Many current stories are not an ebook option.) What does it mean to the operation of the school library? What services will we be able to provide? What does it mean to the budget?

So many questions and there are many different ways to approach ebooks. I am really just starting to try out the different options for novels.

Reading a post on the Creative Commons blog, published on May 11th,  YA novelist Cory Doctorow has recently released his latest work of fiction, For The Win, as an ebook under a CC BY-NC-SA license,  available for download here. 

From the May post on his site, he announces

Today is the launch for For the Win, my latest YA novel. For the Win is an adventure story about kids around the world who work as “gold farmers” (people who do repetitive tasks in games like World of Warcraft to amass virtual fortunes that are sold on to lazier players) who use the video games and other networked systems to organize a global trade union, called the Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web (or “Webblies”).

There is also a Teacher’s guide that has been written for For the win on the Tor/Forge blog.

Cory Doctorow’s book, Little Brother, was also available for download under the same license. This was not detrimental to the book’s sales as it spent four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

The new publication is a very generous offer. There are three options that you can choose from: downloading the book for free, making a donation or buying the book at his site. I like that there is provision for anybody who would like to make a donation to needy schools in return for obtaining the book.

Cory Doctorow has been a longtime supporter of Creative Commons.  and there is more on why Cory uses CC for his works, see his posts for Locus Magazine on Creative Commons (Nov 2007) and Why I Copyfight (Nov 2008). He is certainly willing to back up his ideas with action.

Useful sites (weekly)

• Thoora.com | Top stories, headlines, world reaction, breaking news Top stories, headlines, world reaction, breaking news -discover what the world is talking about; compiles blogs, twitter, etc.; broken into categories – has a sci/tech category

• Iconfinder | Download free icons Find free icons for project use, handouts and presentation.

• Footnote.com – The place for original historical documents online Footnote is an excellent site for finding and sharing historical (primary) documents. You can search by either keyword or via timeline which is essential for any historical site. You can then save and/or share original images of historical documents 

• Dipity Dipity lets you create interactive timelines that you can share with the world. You can share the latest news, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Twitter and more t

• OER Commons for New Zealand Schools – WikiEducator 

• Stage’D! Stage’d is a tool that helps students to tell digital stories in a new 3-d way. Students can create a stage full of characters and dialogue as if they are directing their own digital play. They can choose characters, costumes, animations, set design and provide characters with dialog. When the 3-d comic has been saved, it can be emailed or linked to with a unique url. The creators of Stage’d are constantly adding new features and options so check back often.

• Bringing them home – Downloads In 1997, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (now the Australian Human Rights Commission) released its report Bringing them home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Following this, the Commission received extensive requests from teachers for information about the report. The documents on this site are in response to the requests 

• Naplan 2010 - NAPLAN  - Literacy – Sharing Images of Success From Queensland Uni  tag

• Overstream — Welcome Easily add subtitles to online videos.

• OllieBray.com: The Scottish Action Plan for Child Internet Safety and Responsible Use A blog post about the Action plan. The first UK Child Internet Safety Strategy was launched in December 2009 and Scotland also has a specific action plan to help address some of the issues Child Internet Safety and Responsible use in Scotland.

• Are schools in the dark on internet safety? – News – TES Connect Interesting for the comments this article solicted after many who were quoted/misquoted put into context their views

• Clarifications: Glow, VLEs, School filtering – Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Education ”Whether through over-zealous editing, poor transferal of interview material from me, over compression of complex arguments or the fact that newspapers feel they can only put online what little will fit in the paper edition (and in the case of the TESS, put even less online than in the paper edition),”

• Instant Or Filtered? « If You Don’t Like Change… A case against internet filtering in school 

• How Glow will almost certainly shine. Eventually – Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Education 

• Scotland’s Child Internet Safety Action Plan 

• VARK — A Guide to Learning Styles A guide to help me work out prefered learning styles. Tips for study.

• Revolver Maps – Free 3D Visitor Maps 

• Steve Hargadon: New Ning Plans: The Good, The Bad, and the Unknown  Steve Hargadon provides a summary of latest interview, etc on ning and new accounts. He speaks directly with Ning representative John McDonald in an attempts to arrive at common ground. Upshot is that Ning will not be free but might be affordable. 

• Don’t Believe the E-book Skeptics | The Committed Sardine 

• Teaching About the Web Includes Troublesome Parts – NYTimes.com Great article about teaching digital citizenship and ours schools’ responsibility to do this. 

• In 1564, William Shakespeare was born on this day. – ReadWriteThink The site includes: Lesson Plans, Student Interactives, Printouts, Guides tags

• Sketchcast – A new way to express yourself – Sketchcast.com Record a sketch with or without voice. Explain something, have fun, or create art. Then embed the sketch player in your blog or point people to your sketch channel.

• Get Lessons | Microsoft Mouse Mischief Makes available some lesson plans using Mouse Mischief. An interesting one for math teachers here but there is also one on apostrophes, colors (for ESL students) and a science one on carnivores, omnivores and herbivores. 

• Five Card Flickr You are dealt five random photos for each draw, and your task is to select one each time to add to a selection of images, that taken together as a final set of 5 images- tell a story in pictures. When you are done, you the option to add a title and explanation, then you can save the story so you can put a link in your resume or send to your Mom (she pay print it out and tape it to the fridge, or she may criticize your creativity, your mileage and mom may vary). Plus we offer the ability to tweet your story! via Langwitches  site

• Shakespeare Resources: Modern English Shakespeare Translations ”Our aim is to help students of all ages understand Shakespeare’s language. From translating full Shakespeare plays and short quotes and phrases in to modern English, to providing in depth articles on Shakespeare’s life and times, and Shakespeare essays, we’re here to help make Shakespeare easy and accessible.”

• Shakespeare & Early Middle English: Development Of Modern English This article from No Sweat Shakespeare discusses the shift from Middle to Early Modern English.

• Ren Faire: Elizabethan Accents A brief introduction to how people’s speech in Elizabethan England actually sounded, their vocabulary, and grammar. Includes a table for constructing Shakespearean insults.

• Elizabethan English Topics include sounds and sentences, puns and word-play, Shakespeare’s pronunciation, and prose and verse.

• Dictionary of Shakespeare, with Insults and Quotes A selective dictionary of Shakepearean words that have fallen out of use, or whose meanings have changed over the centuries

• CanvasMol Canvas Mol is a website that provides 3D, interactive, rotating models of simple and complex molecules. There are 46 models of relatively common molecules like glucose, fructose, and morphine. Each model can be altered to show or not show bonds, to show or not show individual atoms, and to rotate on the X,Y, or Z axis. Canvas Mol works best in Chrome or Opera, but can also be used in Firefox and Safari. 

• TitanPad Use this to create a public space for group collaboration on the fly. Might be a great tool to have on-line discussion with students, or a place for students to collaborate on an assignment. , 

• Life on the goldfields Virtual Exhibition State Library of Victoria 

• School libraries in Australia ,

• Quietly, school librarians still make impact | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | News: Education 

• Gutenberg 2.0 | Harvard Magazine May-Jun 2010 digital revolution, Harvard libraries“Throw it in the charles,” one scientist recently suggested as a fitting end for Widener Library’s collection. The remark was outrageous—especially at an institution whose very name honors a gift of books—but it was pointed. Increasingly, in the scientific disciplines, information ranging from online journals to databases must be recent to be relevant, so Widener’s

• :: e-Learning for Kids :: e-Learning For Kids is a great site with some wonderful interactive learning games that are engaging and fun. Students click on their grade and then a list of games divided into subjects comes up.

• Rhymes.net Rhymes.net is a simple search site that returns rhyming words to whatever you enter in the search field. The rhyming words are divided into syllables for ease of use and there is a list of photos of whichever word you search for. Even better, Rhymes.net automatically generates citations for bibliographies

• Convert PDF to Word (DOC) Online – 100% Free! A free beta version that allows you to convert pdf files to fully editable word documents. . You simple go to the site, upload your pdf, select either .doc or .rtf, enter your email and click convert. PDF to Word then emails you the word file upon completion. There is no sign up necessary and the turn-around time is approximately 10 minutes. 

• kwout | A brilliant way to quote Kwout is a great tool that allows you to take web clippings off of any website and it will keep the links hot.

• theunquietlibrarian – virtualbooks 

• Ebook Library – Home EBL is a radically innovative ebook library service that features a pay-per-view ebook lending service that integrates with library collection management and catalogue 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Trailers and e-books

I love my illustrated books. Some of my old picture books have such beautiful illustrations. There is now new approach to the classic Alice in Wonderland story… and with a difference, the classic illustrations have been brought to life for the iPad.

This app makes the story interactive. This particular form is not meant to be read sitting still. It can be shaken and turned. There are many interactive elements on the screen to move around, fall down or jump up.  If  you tilt your iPad you can make Alice grow big as a house, or shrink to just six inches tall. It is “odds on” that the kids will love it. I too would love to try it but unfortunately because of the US success the date for the sale of ipads in Australia has been delayed. For now I will just have to make do with this demonstration. I notice that Alice for the iPad is available from the App Store and there is also a free, lite version.

Another beautiful trailer was brought to my notice by my colleague Tania Sheko this week. Neil Gaiman’s journal/blog post, which he labels “just happiness”, he remarks on how happy he is with the result of a collaboration with Charles Vess. In the trailer he is reading his poem Instructions, and Charles Vess illustrations accompanying the words. In the trailer we see the illustrations of Vess developing from pencil drawings to delicate paintings. It is such a whimsical trailer to promote Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s upcoming children’s picture book: Instructions. It really whets my appetite for the book.

This week I was at a conference where there was one session on some ebook options. I have also been discussing the future of eBooks with the adminstration at my school and with other teacher librarians and teachers. We are still really at the beginning of the journey with eBooks and there is no clear direction except that the eBook, in one form or another, is here to stay.

The “old technology” hard-copy book version, that has been around for about 500 years (in its common format) is a well-loved and remarkably robust  invention. I believe that eBooks can happily coexist with the paper versions as do audio books. The eBooks can provide access to a library of books, anywhere, anytime and in a very compact package, great if you are on a long flight for instance. I am beginning to regularly see people on trains checking news headlines on the iPhones. This is great if you have limited space or if you have only few minutes to read. Audio books and podcasts also fulfil a need, especially for visually impaired or if you need a hands-free version of the story. They can, in addition, offer a performance akin to a drama in some instances as with my own BBC radio collection titles.  I regularly listen to podcasts out walking or when I am on long drives on country roads. They are great companions on my journeys.

I have also tried eBooks with some of our students and so far they have no clear preference for one form over the other. It depends on many factors and they are really quite forthcoming about the strengths and weakness of each form. So I believe that the “old” book has little to fear in the near term from the new eBook version. Rather they can happily co-exist and support each other.