Reading with the XO

Read books from the XO library. One way to do that is to open the Browse Activity, click the books link, and then click encyclopedia, picture books, or dictionaries.

Your XO laptop contains a library that offers many interesting reading materials in many languages. These books are sometimes called "ebooks" for electronic books, and Portable Document Format (PDF) files are one type of ebook. You might like to flip the laptop display so that it lays flat while reading ebooks. You can also map the keys so that the XO recognizes a "page forward" or "page backward" command using the keypad.

The only way to view PDF files is to select the file in the Browse Activity or in the Journal, and then tell the Read Activity to open it. The Read Activity and Watch & Listen Activity are two activities that are not started from the Home View; you must access them through a file Activity like Journal or Browse.

You can also download the Read Activity as follows. 

1. Start the Browse Activity, and then click find activities under the search area.
   
2. Download the .xo file from wiki.laptop.org.
3. After the .xo file has downloaded, save it to your Journal.
4. Go to your Journal, click on the Read.xo file, and click the Resume icon. The XO installs the Read Activity and you can launch it from the Home View.

Reading epub files

Epub is an electronic book or ebook format that you can read on your XO screen after downloading and installing a reader such as FBReader, and downloading and storing the epub files that you want to read. To complete this procedure, FBReader must be installed on the XO. To install FBReader, open the Terminal Activity and type:
su -c ‘rpm -i http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/updates/7/i386/fbreader-0.8.8-2.fc7.i386.rpm’

To download and view epub books, follow this procedure. 

1. Start the Browse Activity on the XO.
   
   
2. Click in the address bar and press ctrl+a to select all the text. Then type in snee.com/epubkidsbooks and press enter.
3. Scroll down to the book you want to download, and click the link. The XO displays a  countdown while the file downloads.
   
   
4. Switch over to the Journal Activity, either by pressing the magnifying glass icon key or by going to the Home View and clicking the Journal icon at the bottom of the Home circle.
5. Insert an SD card or a USB device into the XO. The Journal shows an icon in a bottom bar when you inset external storage media.
6. Locate the downloaded epub file, but do not launch it. Drag the file to the SD or USB icon in the bottom bar.
   
   
7. Click the Home View key and start the Terminal Activity (you have to scroll right to see the Terminal Activity icon.)
8. Click in the Terminal window (otherwise you will be typing in the Terminal search box). Find the name of the external media, which is in the /media directory. For example, type:
   df
9. You will see the name of your SD card or USB device in the row with /media/ before it. You need that name to copy the epub file from the external media to the correct location for FBReader to find the book file.
   
   
10. Change to the media directory where the epub file is stored and rename the file to something shorter. For example, type:
    cd /media/USBMEM
mv "File TheThreeBears.epub downloaded from_http___www.snee.com_ebooks_TheThreeBears.epub..zip" TheThreeBears.epub LittleBoPeep-ANurseryRhymePictureBook.epub


11. Copy the newly named file to the ~Books directory. For example, type:
    cp TheThreeBears.epub ~/Books


12. Launch FBReader by typing FBReader at the Terminal prompt.
    
    

Tips

• If you do not want to type so much text on the little XO keyboard, eject the SD card or pull out the USB device, put it in another computer, and then rename the file there.
• Alternatively, you can plug in a USB keyboard with normal size key layout into the XO to do all your typing in the Terminal Activity.
• If your USB device has a space in the name, you cannot use it with your XO. Put it into another computer and rename it without a space.

What am I learning?

Learning to read involves seeing symbols and understanding the rules for pronunciation and combinations, so the more you read and practice reading, the more words you can learn and understand.

Why is this important?

Reading a wide variety of materials gives you many viewpoints and information, sometimes in a faster or easier method than you can get merely by talking to others.

Reading news on the Internet with the News Reader Activity

 

Read the news by subscribing to newspapers or web sites using the News Reader Activity as an interface for viewing news feeds with RSS, or Really Simple Syndication information.

• Keep up-to-date on news or weather near your home.
• Find out when your favorite author's web site has an update.

 

What am I learning?

By reading continually updated news, you are learning how quickly information is available and how often the news changes. Plus you are learning about current events.

Why is this important?

You want to keep up with the latest news and events and reading material in order to continually learn about the world around you.