Case study: to investigate blogging as an e-learning tool in post-primary schools

The purpose of this case study is to investigate blogging as an e-learning tool. The era of e-learning has truly arrived. Educators have at their hands many free e-learning tools. It can be no longer the case of how information technology can be incorporated into the classroom but how effective each e-learning tool is to us as educators. Educators need to embrace e-learning combined with traditional teaching methods in order to engage and motivate our students most of whom were both after 1998. The research case study involved students from two post-primary schools, a single sex school in county Kildare and a fee-paying school in south county Dublin. The county Kildare school students created and developed their own blog as part of their transition year and the fee paying school students accessed their schools science blog, which was created and developed by one of their science teachers. Two questionnaires were distributed to both schools, a focus group was conducted with students from the Co. Kildare school and both of the blog facilitators from each school were interviewed. The case study found that blogging is an effective pedagogical tool, students found blogging an effective way to learn but students do not use blogging as a communication device.