To quote from the document The role of ICT in the PYP, written by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (2011). .

ICT provides opportunities for the transformation of teaching and learning and enables students to investigate, create, communicate, collaborate, organize and be responsible for their own learning and actions.  ICT allows students to make connections and reach a deeper understanding of its relevance and applicability to their everyday lives.

At St Michael’s, the year 7 class has been using the Web2.0 tool Edmodo to practice the 21st century skills mentioned above, especially communication, collaboration and connections. 

To quote from the Edmodo website

Edmodo provides teachers and students a secure place to connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussions and notifications. Our goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner.

Edmodo has the look and feel of a social networking website and as such, is an excellent safe tool for engaging students and teaching them about Cybersafety and ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information technologies. 

Edmodo is used effectively in the year 7 classroom to

• Discuss hot topics, enabling students to practice persuasive writing in a post/reply style format and also to apply ethical principles of etiquette and respect.
• Submit journal entries and assignments for teacher comment or marking.  Students upload Microsoft Word documents, the teacher adds comments and then the student accesses or downloads the marked document.
• Communicate events via a calendar.
• Collaborate by uploading documents and website links to a shared library.  This is an excellent way to group resources for a particular Unit of Inquiry, ICT skills session or other research activity.
• Communicate homework requirements.
• Communicate with students who went on the recent exchange trip to our sister school in Fiji.
• Do all of the above activities from outside of the school, from any computer with internet access.

Here is an example of a class discussion about war.