Interesting project for a school...

John.Deery · 01-08-2010, 11:23 AM

Hello all,

I was searching around to do research for a project my boss just dropped on my desk and I thought I'd tap the knowledge of this forum.

We were just asked by the higher-ups in our district about supplying e-readers to a select group of students as pilot for textbooks. Ideally they would be not be connected to wifi or wireless and have no account or subscription services (so students cannot charge up the school account and the devices can be lent out to anyone) but have note taking ability and the ability to do text-to-speech.

So far, I like the look of the BE Book (Hanlin eReader V3), which has everything except the note taking. Does anyone have additional ones that they think would work?

Also, and I'm not sure if this belongs in the "software" forum, but our teachers would be managing these e-readers, so I'm also looking for a way that they could mass deploy a book. I'm thinking of hooking up the readers to a usb hub, then being able to plug the hub into a laptop and push a book to each of them. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't find anything that did this, but before I jump into programming an interface I wanted to check if something existed.

Thanks!

surrealmind · 01-08-2010, 02:00 PM

EBook Technologies (ETI), the company which makes eBookwise, can apparently offer this kind of centralized control of content for enterprise users: <http://www.ebooktechnologies.com/enterprise.htm>. For example, they're currently partnered with MyDistrict.Net which, if I understand correctly, uses the reader to push out new route information to truck drivers periodically. Someone here may know more about how it actually works, but that's the impression I've got. I'm not sure what the mechanism is, however, because the eBookwise does not have wifi or a wired Internet connection--you have to hook it up to a computer via USB to download books off of Fictionwise (or use impserve to grab it from your own computer). I guess it does have a 33.6k modem, too.

The eBookwise itself allows notetaking with a stylus, so it seems to match your requirements of no Internet, annotation ability, and potentially, centralized content control. But it is old technology, ancient in terms of ebooks. It uses an LCD screen and has its own proprietary file format which may not have the books you're looking for unless you're creating them or converting them yourself. No .pdf, but conversion from Word, html, and txt documents is very doable, and other ebook formats may be possible with some know-how. Also, you cannot get annotations back out of the device onto a computer very easily unless you have Smartmedia cards and good tech skills, so take that into account.

On the other hand, it's dirt cheap compared to other readers, and as I said above, it may be capable of centralized content distribution. You'd have to email the company to find out for sure. As you can tell, I love the old eBookwise, so take that into consideration.

01-08-2010, 11:23 AM	#1
John.Deery Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2010 Device: kindle 2	Interesting project for a school... Hello all, I was searching around to do research for a project my boss just dropped on my desk and I thought I'd tap the knowledge of this forum. We were just asked by the higher-ups in our district about supplying e-readers to a select group of students as pilot for textbooks. Ideally they would be not be connected to wifi or wireless and have no account or subscription services (so students cannot charge up the school account and the devices can be lent out to anyone) but have note taking ability and the ability to do text-to-speech. So far, I like the look of the BE Book (Hanlin eReader V3), which has everything except the note taking. Does anyone have additional ones that they think would work? Also, and I'm not sure if this belongs in the "software" forum, but our teachers would be managing these e-readers, so I'm also looking for a way that they could mass deploy a book. I'm thinking of hooking up the readers to a usb hub, then being able to plug the hub into a laptop and push a book to each of them. I did a bunch of searching and couldn't find anything that did this, but before I jump into programming an interface I wanted to check if something existed. Thanks!

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01-08-2010, 02:00 PM	#2
surrealmind Connoisseur Posts: 71 Karma: 22 Join Date: Dec 2009 Device: Nook Color CM7, EB 1150, TC1100	EBook Technologies (ETI), the company which makes eBookwise, can apparently offer this kind of centralized control of content for enterprise users: <http://www.ebooktechnologies.com/enterprise.htm>. For example, they're currently partnered with MyDistrict.Net which, if I understand correctly, uses the reader to push out new route information to truck drivers periodically. Someone here may know more about how it actually works, but that's the impression I've got. I'm not sure what the mechanism is, however, because the eBookwise does not have wifi or a wired Internet connection--you have to hook it up to a computer via USB to download books off of Fictionwise (or use impserve to grab it from your own computer). I guess it does have a 33.6k modem, too. The eBookwise itself allows notetaking with a stylus, so it seems to match your requirements of no Internet, annotation ability, and potentially, centralized content control. But it is old technology, ancient in terms of ebooks. It uses an LCD screen and has its own proprietary file format which may not have the books you're looking for unless you're creating them or converting them yourself. No .pdf, but conversion from Word, html, and txt documents is very doable, and other ebook formats may be possible with some know-how. Also, you cannot get annotations back out of the device onto a computer very easily unless you have Smartmedia cards and good tech skills, so take that into account. On the other hand, it's dirt cheap compared to other readers, and as I said above, it may be capable of centralized content distribution. You'd have to email the company to find out for sure. As you can tell, I love the old eBookwise, so take that into consideration.

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