need help managing my eLibrary with students

[CarolynBG]

Originally Posted by exscentric

Google for your database, you might find a template online, or something you could adapt to your use. Also check microsoft for templates, the old Works program came with a bunch and I think they have them for Word/Excel.

I've been looking in the Bento templates that users have submitted but haven't quite found the right thing yet. Good idea to look at the Excel ones.

You might also ask Amazon if they could allow you to see their data usage on your account. I have no idea how much info they gather but would guess they track a bunch.

Also a good idea, I bet you are right. (For instance, the emails telling you you've bought something don't indicate which device it was that bought it, but I bet they know, and if I can't turn wifi off, I'd like to know, just in case something inappropriate does get bought. I'm starting to worry about CIPA -- found some stuff on that on a different forum site. This is something that spans all kinds of devices that people are wanting to put into the hands of kids at schools...)

thanks for the additional ideas,
C

[speakingtohe]

Seems like a pretty challenging task you have in front of you. Might be a book in the experience itself if you keep good records

I would try calibre which is an ebook management program with a spreadsheet like interface. (open source donation supported)
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=166

You can email books directly to the kindle from calibre which might be the easiest way to keep track of who is reading what.

You have the ability to add a custom column for each student to keep track of usage. And you can export to a csv file.

Would be very interesting to see the results.

Helen

[Pinecone]

Originally Posted by CarolynBG

But they (esp. the principal) know their particular students better than I do, and they were actually excited about the possibility of the students using TTS to first hear the words (presumably while reading along) then (I assume) reading again silently. In any case, they really latched onto that feature -- at that point in the process I'd just heard about the touch Nook which is at the same price (I think) as the Kindle, and was ready to switch to that; but I was beholden to our grantor to at least include the reasons the Kindle was on the list. And, as I said, the principal jumped on that.

Don't get me started on the idiocy of our current education system and many (most?) of the "educators." And the lack of things like basic literacy of the students they graduate.

[CarolynBG]

An update. Got hit by a bit of an eLandmine this week... long story short is that I am almost certainly switching to the Nook Touch. This rids us of the online browsing problem someone brought up up above, but not them surfing the B&N store while at school, and I don't know yet if the school is going to get sketchy on me about that (is just seeing the title and description of a nasty book enough to be a CIPA violation?) -- but that's not the topic here.

Here I'm still trying to learn how best to manage my books and who's got what checked out, and of course the Nook model is very different from the Kindle model. I will have 3 accounts, each with 5 or 6 nooks, and every nook on a given account will be able to see all the books on that account. In some ways this may be easier, way easier. At most we'd have to buy 3 copies of a popular book, but given this model, I will wait to see what kids want rather than pre-seeding the account (except I *will* get as many of the freebies as possible that are appropriate, so the nooks have something in them to start).

So if anyone has any advice about managing a 3-account system, I'm all eEars. (And I need simple if possible because it really isn't a big enough project to warrant extremely complex... also need inexpensive/free, because there's no money in the grant for buying anything for this purpose. Maybe just keeping track in excel will be sufficient.)
:-)
Thanks again!
Carolyn B-G

[pidgeon92]

We wanna hear the long story.

[CarolynBG]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

We wanna hear the long story.

check out Unquiet Librarian's latest couple of blog postings, (e.g., http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress...quiet-library/; it's also being propagated to other blogs) and on top of that she emailed me directly and told me what Amazon had been telling her and invited me to call her and she'd tell me more [unfortunately we haven't had a chance to finish the conversation; school starts next week and she's busy getting her teachers ready]). I got similar stories from the rep though she wouldn't commit herself to a hard and fast rule... but Amazon is wanting ("recommending") one device per account in schools (with Kindle, a home user can connect as many devices as wanted to an account, though with Nook it's limited to 6, and with Kindle most books on the account can be on up to 6 of the devices at once... but the rep and I agreed that in the setting I'm in if I limited it to one kid at a time I'd be meeting the spirit of the idea of a single or limited number of users... but even then, it's not clear the publishers really would be happy about that or that I wouldn't have problems in the future.)

Moreover, once I had a reason to look at the new Nook because the Kindle was being questioned, I really like the touch feature better than finding a word in the library on the Kindle, and that's one thing we think will be useful for the kids.

Yeah. That's pretty much it.
Carolyn

[pidgeon92]

Wow, that is horrible. Lawyers ruining everything.

You'd really think that Amazon (and everybody else) would seize this great opportunity at getting their branded ereaders in the hands of tomorrow's consumers, instead of coming up with these arcane rules.

[CarolynBG]

You'd really think that Amazon (and everybody else) would seize this great opportunity at getting their branded ereaders in the hands of tomorrow's consumers, instead of coming up with these arcane rules.

Yes, you would think that. And if you read some of the comments there you'd see that different people are getting different stories from different amazon reps. But the overall tone of Amazon is CYA, whereas the tone from the local B&N store manager as well as others I've talked to there is wanting to work with the schools and be in the schools... in some ways it's easier to manage my project the way nook does it, some ways harder (and I find the Amazon page for managing my books in my account, as well as devices associated with the account, MUCH easier to figure out than B&N's. But I will have local live help at B&N).

Also, as you say, just getting their product in the hands of future consumers. Plus I've read that folks actually buy more real books after getting hooked on reading something on an eReader, or in a library. The publishers and librarians are at real loggerheads in this whole thing, and Amazon and B&N et al are kind of caught in the middle, though I'd think they still come down on the short-term side of SELL rather than let be borrowed (even though yes, I know Amazon is finally going to start letting eBooks for Kindles be allowed in some kind of library). So it's not clear to me how much Amazon or B&N even really are on the end-user's side... ok, mini-rant over.