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by lynettelall

by lynettelall

E-readers or e-book readers have seen rapid sales growth in recent months. Costing as little as £89, e-readers can store and nicely display hundreds of e-books, available from the online sites of booksellers, libraries, and other distributors. Some e-reader models connect directly and wirelessly to the internet to access both e-books and mp3 sound files; others connect to a computer from which files are transferred by USB.

Documents such as journal articles and course materials distributed via a VLE such as Blackboard can be loaded onto an e-reader, saving the hassle of printing and carrying around papers.

This guide offers simple steps to configure handouts so that they can be loaded onto such e-readers as Sony, Amazon Kindles, and Apple iPads.

Software needed:

Microsoft Word

Calibre - free download from http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/download

You may also need a screen shot capture utility such as MWSnap for Windows (free); for Macs this capability is built into OS X (shift-cmd-4).

Begin with a Word document.

Clean up the document - eliminate multiple line spaces and left-side indents. This is simply cosmetic. The document looks much nicer on the e-reader if you do this.

Save as html or Save as Webpage

Name it according to this pattern: document title – authorfirstname authorsurname.html (e.g. Language Teaching Assessment Brief – Gabi Witthaus.html )

In Calibre, click Add Books, browse and find your html document.

Highlight your newly-added book and click Edit Metadata. Title and author name should have come over correctly; fix if not. (Tip: in this box, whatever you type in Series will establish a collection on an e-reader. You may have Assignments, Extra Readings etc. This is a good way to organise documents on e-readers).

Highlight your e-book and click Convert E-Books. In the upper right corner for Output format, select ePub (or MOBI if you are converting books for a Kindle). Click OK at the bottom.

To move the document onto the e-reader, in Calibre, connect the e-reader to the computer. Highlight the document you want and click Send to Device. You may be able to highlight your book and drag it to the icon of your device.

To move the document to the eReader without special software: connect the eReader to the computer. In My Computer, you will see the eReader as if it were an external hard drive. It often shows up as three volumes (for example, E:, F:, and G: ). Locate the epub file you created. In Windows, you should find it in My Documents, in a folder entitled with the author’s name, inside a folder entitled with the document name. On a Mac, you will find it in your home folder, in a folder called Calibre Library, then inside a folder entitled with the author’s name. Drag the file onto the eReader drive, and put it into the database – media – books folder.

If you are loading a PDF file onto your eReader, simply drag it from your computer into the database – media - books folder.

epub files can be posted onto a VLE such as Blackboard for students to download and load onto eReaders themselves.

A note about charts and figures: pictures and many figures will display perfectly without any special attention. However, tables created in Word do not move over very well to the eReader. It is best to - take a picture of such a table using a screen shot capture utility, and substitute the picture you’ve just taken for the original table. Do this in step 1, and the document should then convert well.

Podcasts can be loaded and played on many eReaders (for example, the Sony PRS-600). Simply move the .mp3 file onto the eReader drive and put it into the database – media – music folder. You will probably need headphones or speakers to hear the podcast.

Any file can be loaded onto an eReader, just as if it were a flash memory storage drive. Only e-books and mp3 files can be properly handled by the eReader, but all other files can at least be stored. This might be a way to distribute to students spreadsheets, PowerPoint files, movie files, free utilities and programmes. Keep in mind that eReaders tend to have smallish storage capacity (since epubs are very small files). Ordinarily, you can extend storage by adding an inexpensive SD memory card. Check the eReader’s documentation or website for details.