[IAEP] Read Etexts now supports highlighting, annotations, and multiple bookmarks

[Jim Simmons]

I just posted version 14 of Read Etexts on ASLO:

http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4035

This version has new features I refer to collectively as annotations.
This includes:

1).  Multiple bookmarks, so you can navigate quickly to important content.

2).  Annotations, which are short notes you can add at the bottom of
the screen which are associated with the current page.  Whenever you
view a page that you created a note for the note will be visible.

3).  Highlighting passages, which means you can select a passage with
the mouse and press an Underline button to have that passage
highlighted and it will be displayed with a yellow background and a
single underline.  The effect is like using a yellow hi-lighter pen on
a passage in a textbook.  You can highlight more than one passage per
page, and you can easily remove highlights too.

These annotations become part of the book and when you share a book,
either using the Neighborhood or by copying the Journal entry to a
thumb drive, the annotations go with it.  So you could have a
situation where a child who was absent can get another child's notes
on a book, or a teacher could create an annotated book for her
students, etc.

This is on top of the other features which include text to speech with
word highlighting and an offline book catalog that lets you easily
find and download some 28,000 titles.

I consider Read Etexts to be about feature complete at this point.
Anything after this should only be polishing what is already there.

I would be very interested in the opinions of the educators on this
list.  Opinions of actual children would be even better, but I'll take
whatever I can get.  As always, if you like it tell your friends, if
not tell me.  And if you know any of the 2,000 children who downloaded
the previous release find out what they're reading.

James Simmons