Get Books/andMedia

For The Kasiisi Project, I have modified the Get Books activity to deliver both eBooks and links to audio and video media to the XO-1. This program fixes a bug which crashes Get Books on older XO laptops. You can find books and media from the internet, a USB drive, or the school server.

Use on older laptops

If your laptop does not run the Get Books activity, you probably are using an older version of Sugar. This version has some of the same features (works from USB drive, searches online eBook archives). It will not work with ePub files or bookmarks.

Use with school servers

Passing books around on a USB drive will be time-consuming for large classes. The school server will follow the same format as the USB library search.

Read-along AudioBooks

Browse dozens of short stories, poems, or a whole book. Click Next to jump to the next section and the narrator jumps to that point. Several sources of short stories and fairy tales are available at different difficulty levels. Trying this out in Kasiisi to see if the reader is helpful or distracting.

• • This is working** -- any HTML book can be divided into chapters. Then, add two snippets of code (one JS, one HTML) and adjust to filenames and chapter list of your book. Audiobook files from Librivox.org or elsewhere are needed

Get Media

You can search, browse, and download OGG/OGV audio and video for your XO laptop. Click on the drop-down (it says PDF) and change to OGG Audio or OGV Video. When you find a audio/video file, you should probably Link the file. These files are quite large and using Link means the file will be kept on the USB or server and the XO will read it from there. If you are going offline later or sharing the USB drive, you may want to Download.

Future Plans

The readalong audiobooks should provide some sort of help or context to bring older books up to date or more accessible for kids who don't know the material as well. The book might be able to detect what words the user is selecting, and provide information.

Using Link lets the file display additional context such as author and publisher on the same page. This page could be adapted to display subtitles, jump to points within the audio or video, and provide additional links and context. My hope is that this will allow users to make and edit their own video collections, add annotations and translations, and share the result with other users or other schools over USB.

This activity is awhile away from that point, though.