Demo Books

Here are a few examples of Sophie in action. While the form of these books will be familiar to anyone who has seen multimedia documents, what is new here is how these were made – by one person, not a programmer, in hours not days. These are demos and as such they are not complete. Not all links are active, movies may be short stubs, etc.

When you've finished downloading each book, unzip the file and open it in Sophie. Look at these in Test mode (by checking the little box at the bottom right of the book window) or in Sophie Reader.

Federico García Lorca: Poema del Cante Jondo

Download (.zip, 57.3 Mb)

Sol Gaitan of the Dalton School in New York developed this book for her AP Spanish students so that they can explore the direct influence of particular flamenco music styles on Lorca's poetry. Gaitan presents both the songs and the poems they inspired, and annotates the poems from pages 11 to 43; with the students expected to follow her lead by annotating the poems in the remainder of the book.

Here are screenshots of some pages in the book; click to expand to full size.

Above: a poem with two annotations, one text and one video.

Above: a poem with an annotation; the annotation, text, has its own video annotation.

Above: clicking the same annotation on a line of the poem makes both text and an image visible.

Above: a page talking about a style of flamenco, with different audio files demonstrating that style. The play and pause buttons can be used to control the audio.

Above: a second page demonstrating a different style of flamenco with its own audio clips.

Macbeth Compare and Contrast

Download (.zip, 2.7 Mb)
This is an assignment for a class in which the students are being asked to compare and contrast three different interpretations of Act I, Scene 2 of Macbeth. The comment field is dynamic so that any comment written there will be visible to everyone else in the class.

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine

Download (.zip, 27.8 Mb)

This is the transcript of a lecture given by Naomi Klein at Concordia University in September 2007. It includes audio, as well as the ability to add comments to the text.

In order to hear the audio, click the play buttons. In order to comment, click "Add Comment" in the comments frame on the desired page. Comments can be made invisible by clicking the closed-eye icon. Please note that any comment will be visible to all other readers.