Western Kentucky University newspaper works through the idea of podcasts in the classroom.  Unfortunately, they get it half right and half wrong.

The half wrong:

The clearest benefit to students will be the money saved on course materials. For instance, many music and foreign language classes require students to buy compact discs. Instead of spending a portion of their savings on a collection of Mozart’s symphonies or instructions on conjugating Spanish verbs, students could download the material for free.

No. The benefit of podcasting isn’t that stuff is free. That’s not it at all. In fact, I think this would be one of the worst selling points for podcasts in the classroom. You want some seriously reliable materials being used to teach students, not just something randomly downloaded off the web. I know the whole “let’s save some money” thing is popular among students, but this ain’t the place.