How to view Kindle books from Dropbox
When I produce ebooks I will always knock out versions in EPUB, PDF and Kindle file formats. Testing on the hardware device is straightforward but I suspect the Kindle App is very popular and thus a priority to test thoroughly. Yet it isn’t obvious how one goes about getting the ebook into the app.
Below I describe the method that enables me to quickly load a mobi file format book into the Kindle app on my phone.
For this test I use the Apple iPhone 4 with the dropbox and Kindle apps installed then:
- Save the Kindle file (.mobi) into dropbox
- Open dropbox and browse to the kindle file
- Press the icon/filename – dropbox will attempt to open the file
- Dropbox will fail to open the file and give you an unhelpful message saying “Unable to view file” BUT you should notice the arrow icon is now available in the bottom corner
- Press the button and you’ll have the option to open the ebook in the Kindle app.
- Choose the Kindle app and then happy reading!
Talking ebooks with James Clay
I recently chopped it up with James Clay about digital books and it is now live, enjoy!
What is the current landscape of ebooks in education? What is the future of ebooks? Where are we going?
This is the 87th e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Are you a glue sniffing, magic mushroom addict?
Guide to using digital media in teaching and learning
Using digital media in teaching and learning is a new guide that I wrote aimed at people who are curious about how images, video and audio might be applied.
I hope that this guide can act as the first port of call for learning technologists and teachers who aren’t quite yet ready to read about the “how-to” kind of stuff that we are great at.
We explore what digital media is, where it can be used to support teaching and learning and what the key opportunities and challenges are.
Talking digital books with Craig Taylor #1
Earlier today I joined Craig Taylor to talk about ebooks (digital books) TODAY, in the first of several episodes about our current and emerging thoughts on ebooks.
I think an interesting point from the conversation was about the ‘uniquely digital uses for digital books’ and the fact we haven’t yet scratched the surface of the potential for digital features.
Enjoy
The Challenge of ebooks: Workshop one
Yesterday I was in London for the first workshop towards the new JISC funded project The challenge of eBooks in academic institutions run by Ken Chad. The two hour session gathered a range of stakeholders to discover what the priorities are for institutions around the creation, curation and consumption of digital books. Here are my notes on the workshop:
- There are major accessibility issues with current ebooks from publishers who aren’t building accessible ebooks from the start. Retrofitting accessibility is costing the sector vast sums of time and therefore money.
- Issue – how to support remote access to resources and staff 24/7
- Issue – publishers are often public companies and only concerned with share price so unless they see “growth areas” things won’t change.
- The future is for either very small collaborations and projects or very large. The medium ground is tough
- We need a collection of real use-cases. For example, there is a need for ebooks that once on a reader device can be read without the need for “checking-in – feature of some DRM tools” as the reader may not always be online (mobility can have its challenges) or “I want to see all my groups notes from this reading”
- There is a need to definite the entire system we are talking about, I suggested Craig Mod’s Post-artifact system as a starting point
- A series of “myth busters” is needed, hat-tip to Amber Thomas
- Innovation and disruption are needed asap and this won’t likely come from most publishers anytime soon
- We need to make sure we focus on the goal of using digital technologies to help teaching, learning and research. What are the unique selling points of digital books that we should be using e.g. social features such as highlighting and note sharing for learning purposes
- A more detailed report of the workshop was made by Phil Barker from JISC Cetis
01 Why bother with ebooks?
Mobile everything has been much hyped over the past few years with figures of device ownership and network activity usage both up, up and away. Within the mobile space, one topic t intrigues me more than others, which is the idea of the digital book, made possible by ebook readers, tablets, computers and software. The NMC Horizon report, an annual look at what’s hot in education and technology has been waving the flag for ebooks since 2010 saying that by 2012 ebooks should be beginning to hit their stride and gaining widespread use. I think they might just be right.
The current digital book is largely relegated to hastily cobbled together editions of existing print books wrapped in an often poorly built PDF file. I can live with this, knowing that there must be light at the end of the tunnel (hopefully not a train) as duplicating print books has been tried, and now we have begun to look at that is next. Whilst I do believe that benefits such as having access to a library at my fingertips, fast searching and 24/7 distribution are great features, those alone are only scratching at the surface of what a digital book could be.
In Post-Artifact Books and Publishing Craig Mod writes:
- The way books are written has changed.
- The canvas for books has changed.
- The post-published life of a book has changed.
Suddenly these three sentences thrust what digital books are becoming into the light. I feel it is worth considering each in context of education.
The way books are written has changed.
The process used to be be of isolation with author> select reviewers > Publisher > seller. Martin Weller’s 2011 book The Digital Scholar came into being in part from his public blog writing on many of the thoughts and topics that went on to become the book. The comments and statistics could have been one method of seeing what “sticks” to inform the book process. Which was then further honed by his tribe using various social tools.
Over the past year or so I have been following with interest as Gráinne Conole writes Designing for learning in an open world, sharing each chapter of it, using the web to “…act as a space to invite discussion and debate on emergent issues. ”
We are able to use ‘digital’ tools and communications to reach those at whom the book is aimed from day zero. Services like Kickstarter have enabled people to float an idea for a book and get the funding BEFORE day 1.
The canvas for books has changed.
We now have a countless number of ways to read digital books. From dedicated hardware such as the Amazon Kindle, to tablets such as the Apple iPad, Google Nexus 7 and more mainstream computers and mobile phones with book reading capabilities. These devices along with ‘apps’ let us read on a digital book on a new type of canvas from print.
My current favourite reader is the ibis reader which allows me to upload EPUB books and access them on all my devices and sync the page I am reading so i can effortlessly move from one reading device to the next. At the 2012 Digital Book conference, Liz Daly, creator of ibis reader spoke about the possibility of streaming books becoming a possible future (spotify for ebooks), helping us become file format and device agnostic.
I can imagine a near future where education book release will be “digital by default”, saving print for core texts.
The post-published life of a book has changed.
A digital book never has to be complete, like Wikipedia, edits can be made and released with ease. New versions being released as “dot” versions much like how software upgrades are done. Being digital, the book may be discovered by a far greater amount of people, and will be easily distributed via established library catalogues and newer services like Apple iTunes U. Services like Amazon allow you to publicly share your ebook reading lists and highlights, suddenly these unique digital social features might start to find usefulness for education books. Teacher and learner sharing notes on the same books, this opens the door to potential new pedagogical exploration.
I am now reading as many digital books as I am print books and I continue to marvel at the idea of what is coming next.
How to copy images to Google Nexus 7
To copy images from your computer to the nexus 7 you need to drag and drop the photos from your computer across to the photos folder on the tablet.
Notice I said DRAG, it won’t allow you to copy and paste, hopefully this gets fixed as it is annoying!
If you are using a Mac, first you need to install Android File Transfer which will automatically pop up when connected to the tablet.
First edit to wikipedia
Today marks my first ever edit to Wikipedia and I thought i’d mark the occasion with this post as a reminder.
I am in the process of creating an ebook from M.R. James short ghost stories, starting with ‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary’. I am using a print edition as the blueprint and noticed that the Wikipedia entry was inaccurate in two places: the title of Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book should be lowercase ‘b’ and ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ was missing an ‘,’ after Whistle… i know!
Proof of my edits are immortalised in the Wikipedia entry revision log.
I now join an even rarer level of N*E*R*D (which itself is a reference…)
100 Things about digital publishing in education
Welcome to 100 things about digital publishing in education. Join me as I discover how learners, staff and institutions make and use digital books for traditional and emerging practices. Lets explore what is unique about ‘digital publishing’ from the view of the people affected. I believe it is an interesting topic and hope 100 things will inform and inspire more of you to try digital publishing and ebooks. If you would like to contribute or heckle, please do get in touch as I’d love to hear your views.