Educate Magis

Role: Product Designer

Educate Magis is a global initiative that is dedicated to enabling an online community of Jesuit school educators. The community transcends boundaries and borders, and opens up a new way of proceeding for schools in service of the Jesuit mission that wish to collaborate in solidarity. The overall mission is to nurture a vibrant online community connecting educators from Jesuit and Ignatian schools all around the world. Educators from Jesuit and Ignatian schools can register to be a member of the Educate Magis community and then avail of all the functionality in the online platform. Being a member of the Educate Magis community allows users to contact other community members, join groups of educators in similar networks, start and join discussions with other members, send requests to any schools they would like to collaborate with, and then access useful resources shared by the community. Members can also experience the community in a variety of different languages including English, French and Spanish.

Since its international launch in April 2015, the Educate Magis vision is to connect Jesuit educators from around the world, facilitate relevant and innovative conversations, allow for collaborative efforts that span the network, and to provide a forum for the sharing of engaging content and the co-creation of new content. This vision, rooted in the long tradition of Jesuit education, allows for new and unique ways of proceeding that advance and renew the universal mission. This vision exemplifies what the whole of the network can accomplish by working together as a global community. The community based platform was first proposed at the International Colloquium on Jesuit Secondary Education in Boston, 2012 and the International Seminar on Ignatian Pedagogy and Spirituality in Manresa, 2014. The core Educate Magis team is currently based in Galway City, Ireland.

See the Educate Magis community overview movie above.

The concept behind the Educate Magis logo was based around the ideology of a network of individuals collaborating and contributing to a community, that in turn could become greater than the sum of its parts. Creating a contemporary and vibrant logo would enable Educate Magis to communicate its ethos through the brand identity. The numerous different scenarios in which the logo could be viewed was an important aspect to consider in relation to the rollout of the new community. The appearance of the logo on everything from a conference banner to a business card had to be consistent. The logo symbol also had to work effectively in isolated instances when integrated onto company stationary, signage or the Android or Apple iOS app icons.

With users of Educate Magis being encouraged to contribute to the potential of the new Jesuit Education community, illustrating this visually with a network of schools or individuals connecting through one common cause, aimed to give the logo a greater impact. The centralized node could be interpreted as the Educate Magis community or the overall Jesuit mission. With the Jesuit values encouraging students to find their individual places in the larger society, this is communicated visually with the complex mesh of connected nodes. This shows that schools will be empowered to collaborate in harmony as a global community.

The significance of the nodes had huge potential in terms of communicating what Educate Magis would be focused on. Expanding upon this concept brought some interesting possibilities in how we could convey the communities network. Several variants of this logo showed different iconography related to education. Another variant of the logo symbol was an elaborate network of links and connections of schools or people forming something larger than the individual. This showed that Educate Magis could transcend the geological boundaries of countries to foster a single dedicated community.

In the photograph above, the logo adorns the sign outside Educate Magis office in Dangan Business Park in Galway City, Ireland.

As the first member of the Educate Magis team recruited by its founders, I led the product design of many of the community’s core features and primary functionality. The following is a selection of some of the user experiences that I helped define. The Global Action Projects page gathers all action projects and contests for the Global Community. Users can bring global issues like social justice and care for the environment to their classroom and raise awareness on these topics through engaging learning experiences. Connected Classrooms is an online tool where users can create virtual classrooms to allow students to interact and learn with their peers from other parts of the world via video. For example, users can create a Virtual Spanish classroom and invite students from other countries to learn and meet in a virtual environment. Next, Global Citizenship Course offers a comprehensive introduction to the topic of Global Citizenship Education. Users can organize teachers to take the course, created using the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm and foster constructive dialogue on how to teach all students to be global citizens. The Global Citizenship Lesson Plans page gathers lesson plans for the community. Users can subsequently teach Global Citizenship in their classroom using these plans. They are practical learning resources, and come in both English and Spanish.

The Interactive Global Map showcases the wide range of locations of Jesuit and Ignatian schools. Users can find their school, search for other schools and get connected. The School Profiles show contact details and additional information on Jesuit schools from all over the world. From there, users can learn more about the network, search for the school they want and then connect. Global Conversations is an online tool which allows users to create and join conversations with teachers from Jesuit schools all over the world. Users can engage with colleagues in interesting and fruitful dialogue to enhance their own work and the work of their colleagues. Collaborative Groups allow users to create groups to collaborate with other members. These online groups can either be public and open for all Educate Magis members to join, private and only open to those who are invited or request to join, or hidden so that only the group members will know it exists. This ensures that all users can share resources and feel comfortable working together in a safe and secure environment.

The Staff Formation section offers courses for new teachers and existing teachers who are looking to continue their education. Users can learn more about the comprehensive vision and ethos of the Society of Jesus through interactive online courses. Finally, the Staff Formation Resources is a collection of all resources shared by the community. Users can see all documents, videos, articles and conversations and share their own.

The Educate Magis Interactive and Printable Schools Map include the Jesuit and Ignatian schools that belong to the regional Jesuit Education Networks. These maps are based on the Winkel Tripel projection. They have been designed in Scalable Vector Graphic format so that they can be printed in high quality in any size required, to best suit a variety of use case scenarios. The maps were produced by myself in collaboration with the wider Educate Magis team to help the community members understand the richness and diversity of the global community of Jesuit and Ignatian schools and educational projects worldwide.

The large map shows the schools in the six Jesuit regions of the world and contains a detailed legend with school name, city, country and region. It also highlights the Fe y Alegría and Jesuit Refugee Service Schools and educational projects by country. This map is specifically designed to be brought to a print shop who will be able to print it as a large poster in any size needed. It can be printed on paper, vinyl or foam board. The small map shows the Schools and Educational Projects in the six Jesuit Regions of the world and contains a basic legend. This small map is designed to be used in presentations or be printed on a large or small sheet of paper, to be used in classroom projects, etc. In the photos section of the site within an album titled The World is our Home, there is a collection of photos of community members from around the world with the map in their respective schools.

In this short movie, Professor John O’Malley presents the Global Map Project in the historical context of Jesuit map-making. He highlights the achievements of Jesuit cartographers of the early modern era in Latin America and China, and their contribution to Jesuit education at that time. A selection of photos with the Educate Magis Global Map from the six Jesuit regions of the world illustrates the sense of belonging to the Jesuit and Ignatian network of schools. Since its publication at the end of March 2016 the Global map became synonymous with its community, finding its home in schools and Jesuit organizations all across the world.