[IAEP] [SoaS] R: E-Books for Sugar on a Stick (Blueberry)

[Jim Simmons]

Caroline,

I'm not sure what the state of printing is in SoaS.  If I was a
teacher I think I'd teach the kids to use View Slides, Browse, and a
Paint program and then use another computer running Image Magick on
Windows (or Linux or a Macintosh) to prepare PDFs.  You'd have to
unzip the archives created by View Slides, which recent versions of
Windows can do (or use JustZipIt for older versions).  Then you run an
Image Magick command like this to create a PDF:

convert scanImage_1.jpg scanImage_2.jpg scanImage_3.jpg mybook.pdf

Or you could print the pictures out one at a time.  This could use a
LOT of ink and be very slow, either way.  It might make more sense to
just create ebooks and publish them where parents could download them.

All this would be dangerously close to teaching kids how to use
PowerPoint.  If you had to print everything out it might be cheaper to
get the kids construction paper, crayons, glue, etc.

Using View Slides is easy enough, I think.  Check out the screen shots
on ASLO.  They're not in sequence, but I think they give an idea of
how to assemble images into an ebook.

James Simmons


On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Caroline Meeks <solutiongrove at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Jim,
> How low is the floor on this? Could a first or second grader do it?  Can
> they print it out and create a book?
> I think book creation should be a big part of our eBook message, and nice
> write ups on a number of different ways for students to do this with Sugar
> might be a great supplement to our Blueberry press releases.
> Thanks!
> Caroline
>
> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Jim Simmons <nicestep at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Caroline,
>>
>> I'm unable to watch the YouTube video but if I was a teacher that
>> wanted to have children create their own books I might recommend using
>> View Slides to collect and organize image files created in other
>> tools.  For instance, children could get images from the Internet
>> using Browse, create images using Record or one of the Paint programs,
>> then use View Slides to import them into a slide show and arrange them
>> into sequence by renaming them.
>>
>> Once you have images in sequence like that you could use View Slides
>> to read them like a book, copy them to a thumb drive and read them on
>> a non-Sugar computer using a program like Comix, or unzip them and use
>> a command in Image Magick to create a PDF out of them.  Once you have
>> a PDF like that you could convert it to DJVU with another free
>> utility.
>>
>> View Slides is consistently more popular than any of my other
>> Activities and since there is very little legal content in .cbz format
>> (and illegal content in .cbz format isn't that easy to find either)
>> I've always wondered what people were doing with it.  This might be
>> part of an answer.
>>
>> James Simmons
>>
>> > Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:47:25 -0500
>> > From: Caroline Meeks <solutiongrove at gmail.com>
>> > Subject: Re: [IAEP] [SoaS]  R: E-Books for Sugar on a Stick
>> >        (Blueberry)
>> >
>> > Going along the same lines but in a different direction then
>> > Tomeu....This
>> > teacher asked for a simple book creation tool for kids.
>> >
>> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TRcKP1MJQs
>> >
>> > Might not be hard to create a Turtle Art Template that prints in a way
>> > that
>> > lets you fold the printed page to create a book.
>
>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>