Great Ebook Sites for AIM

I am facilitating a day workshop on Accessible Instructional Materials. The presenters were from OTAP. There were some sites they shared that are resources for ebooks. I thought I would share them with you.
Enjoy!
Lon

knowledgerush
fictionwise
crankylibrarian
Lit2go
tumblebooks
accessible book collection
project gutenberg
kidthing - NEA Read Across America




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Bookshare on No Limits 2 Learning Live

Getting to Know Bookshare Live! Wednesday, April 15 at 1 PM Pacific time.

Betsy Beaumon and Betsy Burgess of Bookshare will be on No Limits 2 Learning Live (Blog Talk Radio) to share about the Bookshare service, what it is, how it got started, what is new, and where they are going in the future.

You can listen in or call in and share comments or questions at 347 945-5431.

The archive will be available on the player in the sidebar after the show is over if you miss it.

Hope to have you listen in!

Lon

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Create EBooks with Your Cell Phone Camera?

Click! Take a picture of that page with your nifty smartphone or digital camera and turn it into a MP3 sound file in 3 steps.

1. Open it on your computer with Top OCR, a free open source program in the Access Apps Suite, or you can download it separately from the TopSoft Ltd. Site.

2. Top OCR will convert your page into text with almost error-free recognition, then read it to you with text to speech.

3. You can convert and save as an Mp3. (You save to .wav first and then click the Mp3 for final conversion - so 4 steps really.)

Sound easy? Here is their short tutorial. Note: They have pdf examples of the finished text files when taking pictures of pages the wrong vs. right way. Interesting.

Here's what they say about using text files you already have:

"You can also use TopOCR to turn the eBooks you downloaded to your web browser from Project Gutenberg or from other web sites into audio files to play on your MP3 player. On the TopOCR Text Window, you'll see a "View" menu item, under that you'll see an item called "Image Window". Simply "de-select" this item, and it reduces TopOCR to only the Text Window. Now you can Copy/Paste from your web browser, or even from other Windows applications such as Adobe Acrobat to TopOCR's Text Window. When you finished pasting the text, simply use the Text To Speech dialog to convert your copied text to an audio file. If you already have a text file on your hard drive that you'd like to convert into audio, simply drag and drop the text file onto the TopOCR Text Window, or use the File Open Dialog to load your document, then use the Text To Speech Menu to generate your audio file. "

I have found it to work great using scanned text or downloaded text files. I have not used my phone camera yet. It highlights words as it reads and can choose from the voices you have on your computer for the sound file conversion and reading. This is a serious tool for something free and should be considered in any school print disability accommodation package of tools. With growing budget issues, a tool like TopOCR can really help.

Post-note Update 4/8/09:

The Access Apps version of TopOCR is older - it does not have the Mp3 encoder. If you download the latest version of TopOCR from the website, it has some updates that improve its sound recording. The newer version allows you to convert text to a sound recording using any available voice you select so that the sound file has that voice. The older version on my computer defaulted to Microsfot Sam as the voice for recordings no matter what other voice I chose.

I just deleted the old Top OCR files out of the Top OCR folder in Applications on the jump and replaced them with the newer files from the TopSoft Ltd. site. I downloaded right onto the jump. I found though that I ultimately had to use Audacity (in Access Apps as well) and convert the .WAV to an Mp3 from there. The Top OCR program wasn't finding an extension needed even though it was there. USing Audacity was a quick converter method - not that much more of a step really. Once you get the newer version out of the way, you will have a nicely working setup. I hope Top OCR can fix the Lame extension bug so the Mp3 encoding works better though. Also, Access Apps is working on a newer updated suite right now.

All the best to you!

Lon

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Kidthing Gives Teachers Free Content for Read Across America

Have you downloaded your free kidthing player yet? Are you getting the free children's literature they pass along to us from month to month? If you can't answer "yes" to these questions and you teach, work with or have children, you are missing out-big time. I was excited to find out that kidthing is a partner with NEA in giving away FREE downloads of selected books from the NEA Read Across America book list over the school year.
The featured free book until September 30 is "The Storytellers Candle" by Lucia Gonzales and Lulu Delacre. These books don't expire and time out so you don't have them anymore, they continue to be in your library. There are more on the way and I will keep you informed as they become available.
Their site has the details and says:
"Pre-school, kindergarten, elementary and junior-high school teachers and librarians are eligible to participate in this program. No purchase is required. Selected books will be available for download only during the calendar month they are featured as the Read Across America book. You will need to download and install the free kidthing player and register with kidthing to receive these books."
On www.kidthing.com/nea , there is a sign up now button where you put in your information to sign up for the NEA book list program. Once you fill in teacher information, you will be prompted to download the player. The player is a new version so if you have the player already, you will be able to also get the new version and re-download your previously purchased material again. If you have purchased a lot of content, the re-downloading of your content might take awhile, which could be kind of a hassle - but at this time I don't think there is any other way to back up your purchases. They ask that you sign in with the same user and password so you get your old purchased content. Maybe they are on a compressed download and then unpack in the re-install so it doesn't take too long. I will have to check into this and let you know.
Whenever I post on the kidthing free downloads, they are some of my most popular posts. they continue to be top of the list for folks to read. I hope you will go to one of my archived posts on the initial kidthing review or the interview on blog talk radio with the CEO, Larry Hitchcock.
This exciting children's book player plays interactive books from major publishers right on your computer without having children be on the Internet. You purchase the media and literature you want, download it and play it with the player. It is iTunes for children's books basically - yet it has many elements of social networking with family and friends online in a safe environment to share books, video, pictures and games.
National Geographic Kids, Dr. Seuss and Wee Sing are just a few of the major titles that have agreed to offer kidthing content. If I were a teacher in an elementary classroom again, I would have this on a learning center computer with headphones in a heart beat - and best of all, the titles are very reasonable in price and For your special needs students and students that need support in reading with an engaging medium, kidthing could just be the ticket.


All the best to you!

Lon




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The Lorax Free on Kid Thing

The interactive book site Kidthing, has "The Lorax" as their free book online right now. Here is what they are saying about it:

The Lorax! (read-along animated digital book) Free to Your Classroom

"Celebrate Earth Day with The Lorax, Dr. Seuss' timeless tale of the environment available for the first time ever in a read-along animated digital format. This special edition of Dr. Seuss' cautionary tale will be available for free exclusively on kidthing through April 30. The pages come to life on your computer screen with animation, narration and sound effects. Or, turn the sound off and read the book aloud. kidthing runs on Windows XP and Vista. The Mac version is coming soon. Download at www.kidthing.com/thelorax".

My Impressions:

There is a reader you have to download onto your computer to play the book. I downloaded the book and played it on the player and it is very nice. The graphics are great and the sound quality is wonderful. I would definitely invest in a few of these books for my kids to watch and read along with. I can see some great applications for kids who have access issues and can't hold and turn the pages of a real book.

The site is still in beta format so there are a few issues. It took a while to download the book and there is no window showing download progress. If you are used to that, you will not see it and you might think it isn't doing anything. It downloads in the background. I just went on to other things and eventually the player showed the book under purchases. I don't know if the book time-expires after April 30th and is not available anymore. I'll let you know what happens.

I also wonder about backing up of purchases. If I lose my hard drive, is the account and player linked to an online server space that has stored my book purchases? If so, that would be great - I would be able to have my books accessed on any computer I had the player on - just log into my account. I wish itunes could do that! When you sign up they ask for a school and a grade. I put in one of my schools and "other" as the grade. I know they are targeting teachers with this offer, but as a parent, put in your childs school, check "other" and you should be able to download too. Don't let the classroom and school piece stop you from checking this out.

One other comment I will make is that even though you are not charged for the free download, you have to put in your credit card info and set up an account to do this. If you are at all opposed to doing this then you might want to skip this free offer. I have protected accounts online and enjoy the ease of shopping that way, but to each their own...

I am under the impression that they have various promotional free books from time to time and I have asked them to keep me posted when they have them so I can let you know.

All the best to you!

Lon

Resources to Build Free Electronic Books and More...

Some Incredible Online Book Resources

This week I hosted an electronic book day workshop for teachers. Shar Burgoyne, trainer from Oregon Technology Access Project brought her travelling road show and set up laptops loaded with software to play with text to speech tools. We downloaded free public domain literature to copy and paste into speech engine software so students can read with more accessibility - especially if they have a print disability. The public domain/free e-text links are below.

Shar pointed out some new sites that I have missed, to add to my toolkit and I shared a few of my own. I thought I would list some resources and links below you can explore. Thanks Shar and OTAP for giving us a great training and a fun day! Below is a sampling of our exploration day...

Online text to speech tools: These have free versions and more advanced pay versions.

Read Please

Natural Reader - I liked that the pay version of this software converted text to Mp3 files to save for creating audio book versions of text.

Odiogo - this tool is what I use on my blog and My Reading Chair Site - it not only reads text online but it allows Mps download of the file so it can function as a type of converter of sorts too.


Reading Sites for ebooks:
Bookbox - You can download one free book that has a player to download too. You can listen to the book and then re-record the text with a mic while reading, and the story will play with student narration. A great way to allow students to hear themselves read and critique themselves as well as enjoy hearing themselves tell the story. It also has many languages to choose from.

Kidthing - This site is in its beta form. They have partnered with Dr. Seuss so "Horton Hears a Who" is their freebie download book. It downloads with a player that installs on your computer. When you are on the site it can read the books. The books are read with a real voice and the pages turn with a click that is possible to activate with a switch and switch interface for kids that have lost their motor skills to hold a book or turn a page. I can think of one pre-schooler right now that was fitted for a new power chair that could use this. I am going to be setting up his computer interface and this would work really well for him to have his own control over books he wants to read. You can create your own online library so when you go there, they are all under your account ready to read.

Kiddierecords - I was born in the late 1950's and I spent a lot of my childhood laying in front of my 45 or 78 rpm light up Bozo the Clown record player listening to fairy tales, songs, Disneyland records and making up great pictures in my imagination to go with them. This site is a nostalgia GOLDMINE. The site has archives of audio files for all the great book and record sets from the '40's, '50's and '60's. There is something for everyone there. I especially like that they have scanned many of the pages in the storybook sets and you can download the images as well as the audio story. A couple of years ago, I imbedded the audio files into a powerpoint and made each picture fill a slide. My son and his friends laid on the floor with my laptop, listened to the story and took turns doing the left-click when they heard the sound that was the cue to turn the page. I saw myself all over again - except this time it was a laptop instead of a record player!

Public Domain and Free Access Text:
Gutenberg.org - This site is the grandaddy and has thousands of texts, audio version in Mp3 and great scanned images of the antque book illustrations. I like having the illustrations as well as the text to work with.


Knowledgerush - This was new site for me and had many of the titles that Gutenberg had - just a different layout and some other titles as well. It is a little more "MySpaceish" looking and more of a social bookmarking web 2.0 feel. There are submitted poems, reviews by readers, etc.

Other Reader Services: These services allow you to purchase electronic text and audio versions of books.
Google Book Search - "Google said that it is scanning more than 3,000 books per day, a rate that translates into more than 1 million annually." You can read about this in the wikipedia article. You can download and start your own book collection through them.

Microsoft Reader - There are some free books as well as the pay for download kinds here.

Amazon Kindle: Aldoblog had a nice post on the Kindle and mentioned the audio piece. You can download Audible books that will play on the Kindle. The link is below.

Audible - Online pay electronic book download site

The Holy Grail of Public Domain, Foreign Language and World Literature-by the-Alphabet-Resource-list.

This is the "Hail Mary" of book links I have found. You might have a better one but this one - astounding! "Fry your brain" :o) looking at site links on the Online Books Page.

And I didn't really explore all the readers, the Don Johnston catalog, Pix writer, and more...that will be another day.

All the best to you!

Lon


image link: http://lifehacker.com/software/books/build-your-virtual-library-online-with-google-book-search-297220.php