Annotating and eBooks

[Kate in Arabia]

I've kind of put myself in a situation here and am wondering how others handle (or would handle) it. First of all, do most people have their kids annotate the literature books they read for class? We're covering annotating in our literary analysis text, I had thought to pull that over to our literature readings. Problem, I don't have hard copies of the books. I mistakenly thought the classic works would be available over here in bookstores... well, they have many classic books, but not the ones I want and/or not the editions I'd prefer.

 

I could, in theory, order them and have them shipped here. This would about double the cost of the book (or books, if I get a copy for myself).

 

I could download Kindle editions. At the moment we have one iPad, I have thought about buying a Kindle primarily for these books but ds could use my iPad in the interim. And I could then have the one book on two devices, so not having to buy a second copy.

 

I could download older editions for free from Gutenberg or other sites.

 

In both latter cases, how would I go about having ds annotate? or just skip it? Find some study guides online for each title and work off of that?

 

(I'm a bit frustrated with myself that I wasn't able to organize far enough in advance to get everything I needed when we were home this summer.. but I need to move beyond that.)

 

Thoughts?

[Kate in Arabia]

Oh, and do people here generally get separate copies of the books for themselves or share a copy with their kids?

[Deniseibase]

Well, you can make notes and highlight on a Kindle. Not sure if that would cover everything you are wanting to do? You can't write any symbols in, or cross anything out, or make drawings of any sort, but you can highlight (or underline, depending on which kind of ereader you have), and then make a note. Not sure how to do it on an iPad, check your user's manual, but you can do it from Amazon's website if you open your Kindle book in their Cloud. Not sure if that's the info you are needing? Hope that helps!

[css3238]

We are using all ebooks this year and I have my kids annotate right on the reader (Nooks in our case). It's not a perfect system, as the pp pointed out you can't do symbols (other than the stock ones on a keyboard) or pictures, but it works for us. With three kids in HS, plus me and mom and the other kid's mom all reading, books would get expensive fast, so we chose this option.

[dbmamaz]

Not sure if its helpful, but notability lets you write on pdfs, on the ipad. you could probably save multiple copies? not sure

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I've kind of put myself in a situation here and am wondering how others handle (or would handle) it. First of all, do most people have their kids annotate the literature books they read for class? We're covering annotating in our literary analysis text, I had thought to pull that over to our literature readings. Problem, I don't have hard copies of the books. I mistakenly thought the classic works would be available over here in bookstores... well, they have many classic books, but not the ones I want and/or not the editions I'd prefer.

 

I could, in theory, order them and have them shipped here. This would about double the cost of the book (or books, if I get a copy for myself).

 

I could download Kindle editions. At the moment we have one iPad, I have thought about buying a Kindle primarily for these books but ds could use my iPad in the interim. And I could then have the one book on two devices, so not having to buy a second copy.

 

I could download older editions for free from Gutenberg or other sites.

 

In both latter cases, how would I go about having ds annotate? or just skip it? Find some study guides online for each title and work off of that?

 

(I'm a bit frustrated with myself that I wasn't able to organize far enough in advance to get everything I needed when we were home this summer.. but I need to move beyond that.)

 

Thoughts?

 

Could you get .doc files through Gutenberg, save them on the computer and then annotate them using a word processing program? I think there are settings within Word that let you make comments on a document as if a work team were editing it.

 

ETA: in my version of Word, you can highlight sections, then use the tools on the Review bar to add Comments. The comments show up on a sidebar column.

Edited September 9, 2012 by Sebastian (a lady)

[JanetC]

I've downloaded gutenberg titles, ran them into word and increased the font size for my visually impaired DD, and took them to Office Depot for printing/binding (using educator discount). I'm sure the same thing would work for creating your own edition with margins and room for annotating.

 

As folks have mentioned, there are a number of ways to annotate a PDF on an ipad. For Kindle/e-reader annotation, you want to see what the keyboard options are. I have a nook touch, and it's pretty easy to type a few sentences with my bookmarks about what's there. DD has the low end non-touch kindle. The keyboard is really not for anything detailed. (The nook store does not work overseas, but there are other kindles with either touchscreens or keyboards.) So, check out the capabilities of any reader you choose.

[Kate in Arabia]

Thanks for everyone's comments..

 

I actually do have Notability on my iPad, ds2 used it to "write" in a PDF workbook, but I personally thought it was cumbersome with the stylus (the nub on the end instead of a point). But maybe I'm stuck in my analog world while my kids are going digital, kwim?

 

I keep thinking it's so much more comfy to sit in a chair with a pencil and a book, but that's me and not him (or anyone else). Perhaps I should put this on my ds to decide, we could try one book one way and see how it goes from there. I looked at Gutenberg for some titles, but obviously the editions are not the latest ones which may (or may not) be an issue.

 

Thanks again,

 

Kate