E-Book Enlightenment: Reading And Leading With One Laptop Per Child

by James Simmons

Overview

This book was written for the One Laptop Per Child project to explain to teachers and students alike how to make effective use of free e-books. However, most of the material in the book will be of interest to anyone who wants to do things with e-books. The book covers where to find free e-books, what formats of e-books are available, how to make e-books in every format, and how to get them published, either using your own book server or through sites like Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and even the Kindle Store. It also covers how you can make an e-book out of a printed book, how to know if a book is in the public domain, how to build your own high speed book scanner, how to use Booki to collaborate on writing an e-book on the web, and more. It's everything you always wanted to know about e-books (but were afraid to ask).

When I wrote this book I did not just compile information from other sources. I did everything I describe in the book. I created donations for the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and Project Gutenberg Canada. I published five books on the Kindle Store. I wrote some of the e-book finding and reading software described in the book. I installed all the Book Server software described in the book, and I installed my own Booki. I designed and built my own book scanner. I wrote books using Booki, and assisted with the translation of one of them. I also read a lot of free e-books, in every format. I think I've done everything you could do with e-books except actually make money on the Nook Store. I'm still working on that one!

There's a e-book revolution coming and if you want to be a part of it this book will start you on your way!

Table Of Contents:

Introduction

Reading And Leading With One Laptop Per Child

Finding E-Books

Sources For Free E-Books
Free E-Book Formats
Sugar Activities For Finding E-Books

Sugar Activities For Reading E-Books

The Read Activity
The Read Etexts Activity
The View Slides Activity

Creating Your Own E-Books

Before We Begin
Converting Your Own Documents
Booki
Scanning Book Pages
Making PDF's
Making CBZ's
Making DjVu's
Making Plain Text Files
Making EPUB's

Publishing Your E-Books

Introduction
Copyrights, Licenses And Fair Use
Donating E-Books To The Internet Archive
Donating Texts To Project Gutenberg
calibre
The Pathagar Book Server
gen Collection Interface gCI

Appendix

Making A Book Scanner
Getting A Rule 6 Copyright Clearance
A Booki Of Your Own
About The Authors
Credits

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013820043
Publisher:	James Simmons
Publication date:	12/29/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	768,485
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

James Simmons has been an avid reader since his childhood, in spite of being placed in the lowest reading group in every grade because of his August birth date. (The teachers generally moved him to the middle group a month later). In the second grade he achieved recognition for being the only student in his class who knew what "porridge" was. His favorite reading was science fiction and books on science. In the sixth grade he discovered the books of Alfred Powell Morgan and began a love affair with radio and electronics that would continue well into the seventh grade. In the eighth grade he discovered the works of Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke. By the time he was assigned to read The Martian Chronicles in high school he had already read it three times and felt that he understood that book better than his teacher ever would. In retrospect he would have done well to keep this opinion to himself.

A friend he made in college encouraged him to try his hand at writing science fiction stories. He had no talent for fiction writing, but he did manage to write a fan letter to Galaxy magazine demanding more stories by Howard L. Myers. James did not know it at the time, but the story he had admired so much had been published two years after the author's death.

While James did not fare well writing fiction, he would eventually do better writing computer programs. He wrote three e-book related Activities for the One Laptop Per Child project: Read Etexts, View Slides, and Get Internet Archive Books. He used what he learned doing this to write Make Your Own Sugar Activities!, a manual on creating Activities for the Sugar platform that is considered the definitive book on the subject, pretty much by default.

James' mother really did tell him that "The readers are the leaders." This was a slogan used by a woman trying to sell his mother a set of encyclopedias. His mother did not buy the encyclopedias.