Educate Magis – an Online community for Jesuit and Ignatian educators

There was a time when missionaries walked the villages and invited families into Catholic schools. From those humble beginnings vibrant education communities were built all over the world that we still enjoy today. These missionaries met people where they were at.

Today educators and students spend a lot of time living in the digital village. This is exciting new mission territory for us. Today, technology offers us the fabulous opportunity to build new Christian education communities on the internet.

Educate Magis aims to create such an online community connecting educators from over 2,000 Jesuit and Ignatian schools around the world.

 

Global Map, Multilingual Resources and Conversations  

Much of the Educate Magis community platform (e.g. a worldwide schools map, videos and documents) is designed to be freely open to the world.

EM Map screst dec 15   Docs screenshot   EM vids screenshot

This openness serves two purposes:

  • people not involved in Jesuit Education can learn about our rich tradition
  • educators in Jesuit and Ignatian schools have some means to evaluate the site before joining as community members

The Educate Magis platform contains a safe space available only to educators working in or connected in some way to our schools. This community platform is accessible by username and password and grants access to more resources (e.g. full keynotes). The private community also has a place for educators to ask questions, have multi-lingual conversations and to call for help. The site is available in English, Spanish and French and has on-page translation to 50 languages. Conversations have ranged from “Caring for the Environment” to “How Compassion Affects Education”. The community platform also has a place for educators to form public, private or hidden groups online to facilitate global collaboration. An example of some groups are “Spanish Language Exchanges”, “Innovations in Teaching” and many more! Membership is free and we welcome you to join our community.

      groups dec 15 conversations dec 15 (crop)

 

A Space for Global Collaboration

The intent of Educate Magis is to provide educators from over 2,000 Jesuit and Ignatian schools in the 6 regions of the world with an online platform where they can meet and get to know each other individually and as a network. As well as getting to know each other, Educate Magis offers a space for educators from around the world to collaborate and work together on projects of mutual interest and need. This collaboration involves educators sharing news, teaching materials (in the form of ideas, documents and videos), organizing student exchanges and co-creating new content. Educate Magis is not a traditional website but it is a collaborative community platform where participation and feedback from the community is needed and appreciated.

 

Join, Discover, Enjoy and Feedback

Educate Magis is designed initially for educators. We would like to learn how to best serve the educators in our global school communities before moving on to invite members of the wider community (students, parents and past-students). However as 2015 ends we are piloting two projects where educators are bringing students from around the world together in a safe space to trial Educate Magis for “global classes”. We will be sure to report on the outcomes of these two exciting projects to our online community members.

There is a full-time team employed at Educate Magis to help facilitate collaboration in the community – so please feel free to ask for help. We will always be listening to and asking for your feedback, so we can continuously develop the site to meet the evolving needs of our worldwide online community. How do you think we can improve? Let us know!

In summary Educate Magis is dedicated to answering the Society’s call to become a “universal body with a universal mission”, enabling us to collaborate in solidarity as a global community.

So if you are an educator involved or interested in Jesuit or Ignatian education please join the Educate Magis community. Get to know your colleagues from around the world and find out how you can work together across the world. We really look forward to getting to know you!

To watch the» “Educate Magis – How to get involved?” video click the following links for English or for Spanish (the French version coming soon).

 

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