For the first time in my PhD program, some of my textbooks are available in e-versions. This is somewhat shocking, considering that I’m in the ‘Instructional Technology’ field, so if any education field would have made the transition by now, you’d think it be us. But I digress…
I’m glad to have my textbooks on my trusty iPad2, but I’m frustrated. Allow me to explain (in a little detail – there is a shorter summary below these 6 notes):
- I use a high powered annotation software called iAnnotate for reading and annotating research articles (.pdf) files, and it works fantastic. iAnnotate provides me all the tools (and more) that I would have access to if I were taking notes by hand, and it does so in a somewhat user-friendly environment. I could go on and on about the other features (e.g. summaries of my notations, etc.), but you can read about those on their website.
- iAnnotate does not support ePub or Kindle’s AZW file formats. I’ve contacted them about this, because I’d really like to continue to use it as my professional e-reader.
- The Amazon Kindle app has putrid annotation tools. They are pretty much useless, because their interface is built more for reading (consuming) than for interacting with the texts.
- Being the computer savvy fellow I am, I decide that I will remove the DRM restrictions from the Kindle book files, and convert them to ePub and PDF formats.
- After quite some time researching on the interwebs how to accomplish this, I’ve downloaded the necessary freeware and successfully removed the DRM restrictions from the Kindle files, and successfully converted them into the ePub format. However, although the ePub format is wonderful, because it adjusts to screen size, font size, image size, etc., there are no useful annotation softwares for interacting with them (at least that I’m aware of). Kindle, Stanza, iBooks…they all are basically useless for academic/professional consumption/interaction with the reading material.
- So, I try to convert the ePub files into PDF files, so that I can annotate with iAnnotate…except converting from ePub -> PDF is futile. The pages don’t fill up (despite numerous setting changes and attempts), there are too many blank pages, the images don’t transfer in full size, and overall, it’s an even worse reading experience than before.
If any of that made sense to you, fantastic. But I’ll still summarize:
- e-Books currently don’t have a e-reader software that is qualified for easy, thorough, in-text annotations.
- Converting ePub and AZM files to PDF files does not seem like a viable solution.
Enter Apple’s new iBooks Textbooks and iBooks Author…
Upon first glance, it seems that Apple has taken a step forward, especially in regards to costs, multimedia, interface, and yes…interacting with texts via annotations (and making those annotations useful). I intend to download and experiment with these new textbooks, as well as use the iBooks Author to create new content for courses that I teach. I hope that the file format, which isn’t exactly ePub, plays well with PCs, Macs, netbooks, etc., and is not limited to the iPad…
iBooks Textbooks…gotta admit: I’m intrigued.
*Note: This post is featured in Danny Nicholson’s blog carnival, which can be found on his Whiteboard Blog: Supporting Technology in the Classroom: http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/2012/01/the-ed-tech-blog-carnival-2012/
Thanks for the entry to the Blog Carnival – the post is now live at, http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/2012/01/the-ed-tech-blog-carnival-2012-1/
And thank you Danny! I look forward to seeing the rest.
I have been tasked with supplying a broad overview of text annotation for our new edition of the first-year seminar handbook – yippee. Anyway, have you in your travels uncovered an particular resource that responds to the vastness of the eReader platforms? In one class of 4 students I have 4 different platforms, only one of which seems to (sometimes) match my old-school hardback text. Any advice would be stellar. And thanks for the details of your experiences.
Thanks for the question, Erin! In my travels through iPadville, I’ve yet to come upon a magical e-reader that works with all platforms. I use iAnnotate to annotate and read most productivity documents (pdfs/docs/etc.), though the latest version has regressed IMO. NeuAnnotate is a less powerful, but free, alternative. I still use either Stanza or Kindle for e-books. In the end, I think one of the strengths of iOS apps is that they all do one thing efficiently and effectively (or at least try to). I’m not sure if our dream of one e-reading/annotating app that suites all our needs will manifest itself soon…though I will continue to buy, experiment, and hope. Let me know if you come upon the holy grail of e-reading though! :)
I’m a medical student and also use my ipad for everything now EXCEPT when I can’t find a book already in PDF form. I have been searching for 2 months now for the same solution!! I have my kindle book converted to EPUB (thanks Calibre!) and then I run into the same problem. The one book that I have in this predicament is a pathology atlas, so if I try to convert to PDF the pictures and explanations are split up on different pages which is useless. I’ve tried playing with the options in the conversion with no solution. I can use iBooks, but it takes forever to load, lags, and crashes EVERY TIME!! Please help if anyone has a solution here, especially with iBooks (this is ridiculous that apple’s own E-reader app is an absolute failure).
Thanks MCS
No solution for ebooks…yet. :)