Free books

Free books? That sounds alluring. Could this be a reason to use iPads in school? My current vote is a lukewarm "maybe". You may find the exact book you wanted to use in class, and then by all means, load it in to an eBook app like Stanza.

Don't get me wrong... free books are wonderful things, and we should be telling students about free books and the best sites to find them on. I just don't see the point, however, of filling up a generic school iPad with hundreds of books the students will never willingly open.

So with that reservation dealt with, here are some ways to access free books.

1. Web access: try www.feedbooks.com or www.gutenerg.org. Gutenberg was the first major free books site, and currently lists 36,000 books. Feedbooks has (probably) fewer books but is more atractively formatted, including showing book covers. Feedbooks does sell books as well as provide free books, so go to "Public Domain" first. When you select "download" you can choose to open in iBooks or in any other book readers that are on the iPad.
2. Via Stanza. Stanza is a highly rated and free book reading app (get the iPad version, of course). Look at the bottom icons when you are in the Library section and you will see another icon for "Get Books".  you may then need to click on "Catalog" at the top of the screen. You will see several sources listed under "Free Books" including Feedbooks and Gutenberg. You can just browse or search to your hearts content then click Download. Books should arrive very quickly.
3. Via iBooks. You can go to a web site like Feedbooks then download into iBooks. You have to go to Feedbooks by using the Safari browser. iBooks will not let you browse sites like this from within iBooks. iBooks will only take you to the iBooks store (part of iTunes). Select a category in the store, then click on the "Free" button to see what is available.
4. Apps that contain books. There are a very large number of apps that actually come with books built in. I mostly ignore those as I cannot see the point, with the tens of thousands of free books available, of locking myself into an app. The likely consequence of using these is that you will end up with multiple copies of the books everyone thinks we should have, such as Alice in Wonderland. The exception is apps that do something special with books such as make them interractive... however these are rarely free.

Two  categories I have not explored particularly well are audio books and apps that read to you. The premier audio book site is www.audible.com, but this is not free. There are quite large audio book sites around, especially supporting visually impaired students (and adults). I'm not aware of any that have their own apps at this stage. The Kindle eBook reader (but not the Kindle iPad app) will actually read any book you download with quite a reasonable computer voice, and I'm keen to hear of any apps that will do this.

Book Readers

The iPad is not universally preferred as an eBook reader. There are those who strongly prefer the Kindle, or any reader with a digital ink display. While the iPad can be bright, most readers allow you to dial down the brightness, and provide "white on black" nightime reader settings.

Where the iPad shines is that it can be all the readers! iBooks was not the first reader, and is not neccesarily the best. Apple now offers iBooks as a free App Store download, and it does have the advantage of linking to your iTunes account for purchases. However, in a classroom context you need to ensure it is NOT linked to an account or that the account is locked!

You can easily obtain the free Kindle app, and this will then sync all of your Kindle books (if you also have a Kindle). However it can be used as a reader in its own right, and will link directly to the Amazon Kindle store. Again, it is vital with classroom machines to ensure that students cannot simply order a book with one click against your account!

One of the best independant readers I have found is Stanza. This has a nice interface, and unlike the Kindle and iBooks, has a "pinch and spread" finger gesture to change font size. It will also link directly to genuinely free book sources such as Feedbooks and Gutenberg.

For a change of approach, the Kobo app is interesting. This is based on the Kobo eBook reader (device) that was being pushed by Borders. It has a "game playing" approach so each new achievement (such as opening your first book) is recorded with a small celebration and an award on your personal Kobo page. While this sounds tempting to use in a classroom, I don't see how this would work if the device had multiple users. Perhaps save this one up for the parent who wants to purchase a device to encourage a reluctant reader.