Earlier this month, I was delighted to learn that three of the four books he needs to read over the summer for school are available as FREE eBooks. The other one (”Animal Farm”) was available on the Amazon Kindle Store for just 99 cents.

Alexander wasn’t sure at first if he’d like reading a book on a screen, but it turns out he likes it a lot. It is very convenient, and he can always have his books with him.

I wonder if we’ll see many schools opt to purchase iPod Touches for students in 1:1 learning projects with the stimulus funds which are being competitively released by states this summer?

On my own iPhone, I use the commercial application “Air Sharing” to quickly upload different files from my laptop to the iPhone to access them on-the-go. Often, however, PDF files are not formatted well to read on the iPhone’s screen. In this situation, the free Stanza desktop application and iPhone application make a perfect combination to convert PDFs to an eText format of your choice and then upload/share files from a laptop or desktop computer to the iPhone.

The free Stanza desktop application runs on Windows or Macintosh computers. After downloading and installing it, open a PDF file you’d like to convert into an eText format with Stanza. Then from the FILE menu, choose EXPORT BOOK AS and select your desired eText format.

Save the eBook you’ve created on your computer, close the original PDF file, and open the eBook version with Stanza. You’re now ready to transfer the eBook from your laptop or desktop computer to your iPhone.

For an overview of different eText/eBook formats, refer to the Wikipedia article, “Comparison of e-book formats.” I have successfully used the eReader format to convert and read PDF files on my iPhone.

If you’re using an iPhone, you’ll want to download and install the Stanza iPhone application. Then, in the desktop version of Stanza you can choose TOOLS – ENABLE SHARING. With your laptop/desktop computer and iPhone connected to the same WiFi network, you should now be able to click on SHARED BOOKS in the Stanza application and connect to your own computer wirelessly. Select the book you want to download to your iPhone, and click DOWNLOAD.

Now you can read the PDF file as an eBook, and enjoy eBook reading functionality including ready-adjustment of text sizes. You’ll notice images are stripped out of the eBook when this method is used.

Your own converted eBook documents should now show up in your Stanza library along with other eBooks you’ve downloaded from sites like Project Gutenberg or purchased.

Have you experimented with different eBook formats, and found one that you prefer over another? I’m just starting to “get into” reading eBooks this summer, and my experiences so far have been VERY positive. It is amazing to be able to have portable, mobile access to not only full-length books others have written but also ANY other document you’d like to convert into an eText format and upload/transfer to a eBook-compatible device!