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It’s about COMMUNITY

Community is very important at Bookshare.   Student members, parents, teachers, and advocates all contribute to a vibrant Bookshare community that continually strives to support our children.

This blog post focuses on the many ways students and families can participate in the Bookshare community.

Bookshare in the community

Although Bookshare is a small California nonprofit, we do all that we can to get out and meet families around the U.S.  Often, we do this by attending and providing trainings at conferences and events.  Last month, we attended two notable conference events for families.

The PEAK Parent Conference on Inclusive Education held in Denver, CO was an exceptional family conference.  Parents attended rich and informative sessions on inclusive classroom strategies, IEP toolkits, education law, and even a Bookshare training session on how parents can use e-books and assistive technology to help their children read.  We enjoyed speaking directly with many parents, listening to family stories, and sharing our thoughts on ways Bookshare can support.

In addition to these great sessions, the conference also provided great entertainment.  PEAK Parent invited the AXIS Dance Company, a world acclaimed dance company with and without dancers with disabilities,  to challenge how we looked at dance and who can participate in it.  We highly recommend next year’s conference for any families in the region!
image of U.S. map

Looking for support in your state?  There is a parent center like PEAK Parent in every state that provides invaluable training, information and assistance to families of children with all disabilities.  Find your local parent center.

Bookshare also attended the Learning Disabilities Association Conference in Jacksonville, FL.  Here too, we were excited to speak with many families and educators and to provide a very popular training session on accessible e-books and the role of technology in the field of learning disabilities.   In fact, it prompted our Director of Outreach to post a thought provoking blog post that you can read here!

Bookshare also attends many conferences and events for educators, college students and assistive technology that we will blog about these in the future.  In the meantime, if you know of any future opportunities for Bookshare to get involved with families in your community, please let us know!

Bookshare community online

Bookshare’s online community is as vibrant as its real world counterpart and is a great source of information and support.

Our Facebook community continues to be a lively place for discussion, news, and sharing.  Parents, educators and advocates frequently post questions and comments on our wall, to which we respond very quickly!  And when you “like” our page, you’ll get timely updates on events and contests.

We have also revamped the community sections of the Bookshare website to provide useful and easy-to-find information for parents, teachers, college students and others.  Within each community, you will find a handy “First Steps” guide that can help anyone looking to get started with Bookshare for the first time.

Two other very great online community resources are the Bookshare Blog and Twitter.  The Bookshare Blog has great editorial on a wide range of topics that you can peruse and even subscribe to via email.  Bookshare’s Twitter account is a great way to keep up on timely tidbits about new books added to the collection, product updates, and interesting news and ideas from Bookshare and other advocates.

Join the community!

As you can see, there are many ways to benefit from interacting with the Bookshare community.  We invite everyone with an interest in supporting individuals with print disabilities to join and participate!

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