TWINNED READING GROUPS USE OF ENCOMPASS

Book selection
You can select books on www.encompassculture.com using the reading compasses for adults, teenagers and children; from the booklists (e.g. TBooks teenage fiction; Reel Books; Sports in Literature etc); author searches.

Reading Group advice
enCompass has a Reading Group section with tips for setting up and running reading groups and also information about our Reading Groups around the world where you can see the type of groups already set up by the British Council around the world and others they are twinned with. You interact with the other reading group is using the discussion board and chat on the site.

Discussion Board
Discussion Boards can be set up especially for projects and then within the board we can set up as many discussion threads as required. If you take a look at the board section you can see what has been done for other twinned reading groups. We need a couple of sentences of text for the start of each thread if there is something you’d particularly like as a topic. All boards are moderated by the Online Reader in Residence. Guidance on Joining in Discussions on the Webboard is available.

Chats
Chat can be arranged to take place on the encompass website between Reading Groups and with authors.

There are some Practical Tips for Running Live Chats and also Guidance for Chat Participants.

I recommend that everyone registers for the chat at least one day in advance as you need to receive a confirmation e-mail and respond to it. It sends you a password which you can change when you sign in. Susan Tranter, the Online Reader in Residence (will act as host for the chat and help you with any questions before and during it). There could be problems if your connectivity breaks but you can easily resume the chat if that happens – we have run successful chats with Nigeria/UK and Namibia/UK recently.

Reviews
Another interactive facility is the adding and reading of reviews. For each of the books listed there is the option to add or read reviews. All reviews go to the Online Reader in Residence who checks that they are ok to use on the site and every month the 5 star rated reviews are highlighted from the front page of the website.

If you are interested in using encompass to twin your Reading Group with another please contact Juliet Wragge-Morley or the Online Reader in Residence.