Best Reader / Software for Annotating?

[PLStepp]

Hello, everyone. New user; I'm the Provost at a small, church-affiliated college in Appalachia. I've "gotten into" the whole e-reader thing as part of a project here at school to improve our students' reading habits.

Our basic goals for the project are to get students to read MORE and to read CRITICALLY. We hope to improve their critical reading by having them annotate their books.

We need a reader that a. encourages (or at least doesn't discourage) annotating texts; b. allows the emailing / posting / compiling / storing of annotations (for reading checks, group discussions, portfolios, etc.) WHAT IS THE PERFECT E-READER FOR WHAT WE ARE DOING?

I've tried several different e-readers, and haven't committed to any particular platform YET.

I love iBooks for the seamless emailing of annotations. But it doesn't want you to copy ANY of the book's text; this is a problem. You can email your comments to the professor, but the professor won't know what part of the chapter you're commenting on. Plus, iBooks it doesn't integrate with Facebook.

I love the Kindle for Facebook integration, which DOES allow you to post a little bit of the text that you're commenting on (this is important.) But I hate the keyboard.

I love Nook Study for PC for annotations and the ability to compare multiple pages. But it only works on single-user computers, and it doesn't sync annotations with a handheld, etc.

When it comes to readers, I've used several readers on my iPhone: Kindle, Nook, and iBooks. Of these, I prefer iBooks because it allows the emailing of annotations.

On my laptop, I've used Kindle, Nook for PC, and Nook Study. I really like Nook Study, but it doesn't synchronize with other Nooks. What's up with that?

We are probably going to go with the Kindle in a pilot program, urging profs to utilize Kindles in their classes. The Facebook integration seems to be a real advantage for college classes.

[ucfgrad93]

I think the keyboard on the Kindle is great for annotations. In fact, I use my Kindle 2 whenever I can in my grad classes.

[anamardoll]

Have you tried Moon+? They have a fantastic highlighting/export system. It's an android app that you can load on a rooted Nook Color or any android phone/tablet:

http://www.anamardoll.com/2011/06/er...taking-in.html

[tomsem]

I think Kindle, because notes are automatically backed up (for Kindle Store purchases), optionally sync, & there are a couple of ways to export them. By contrast most other reading systems don't seem to even provide export capability (except for FB/TW sharing), which makes absolutely no sense to me.

Still Kindle is just a start, not the end. I'd like to be able to send my notes to someone else with the same book, or overlay those of someone else (author or critics etc.). Kindle has parts of this. But it needs to evolve to a standard exchange format so vendor and format considerations don't get in the way. We're probably years away from that though.

I don't think a physical keyboard is essential - I'm finding Nook's touch keyboard at least as productive right out of the box (and better than my iPod Touch because my fingers fit better), and that's without any auto-complete feature as you might find on a smart phone. But of course if you want to write novels on your ereader, that's a different requirement.

[witeowl]

You might want to investigate Kobo (the apps more than the device). The social features that earns it scorn from purists may just be right up your alley (posting to facebook, etc). It may also have the benefit that you wouldn't need to mandate that all students purchase a particular device, if that's at all an issue.

[vxf]

iAnnotate on an iPad is great for PDFs... not sure if that's what you are looking for.

It allows for saving annotations within the PDF and viewing those on any PDF reader.