Podcasting - listening to a lecture twice? Unlikely!

Example podcast courtesy of Frydenberg (2006) and an excitable 11 year old. So the argument goes something like this... Students like i-pods and use them continuously therefore we should use this technology in the teaching and learning process. Students also like drinking large amounts of alcohol and watching Hollyoaks but I don't see the same argument applying! Guess what though? Apparently students in 2007 prefer i-pods to getting drunk - surely not? Question 1. If students find it difficult to concentrate in a lecture where they have the opportunity to hear, see additional resources (e.g. powerpoint slides, artefacts, internet linkages), ask questions, interact with fellow students and be able to observe the lecturer's body language and enthusiasm (or otherwise) for the subject, why would listening to a monologue on an i-pod be anymore gripping? Question 2. If a student attends a lecture why would they want to listen to the whole thing again anyway? Why not read a book or do some additional research on the web? Conversely, if the entire lecture is available as a podcast, then why go to the lecture? A small point perhaps but when students attend lectures with their i-pods in they aren't actually listening to other academics but, more likely, Fall Out Boy. Frydenberg's research gives us some answers: 1. very few students skip lectures in favour of the podcast replacement 2. novelty value wears off after 6 weeks of downloading podcasts with the student download rate diminishing 3. students prefer to listen to no more than 6-7 minutes of a podcast (so forget simply taping the whole lecture) 4. pretty near impossible to search in a podcast so students give up However - hope springs eternal - this research also showed very clearly just how much students like playing with the technology - their enthusiasm to try it out. Podcasts aren't for lecturers to develop and broadcast to show their technical wizadry but for students to use as part of the assessment process. Rather than spend an hour a week editing the juicy bits of your lecture into a 10 minute refresher for your one keen student to listen to on the bus - set them an assignment to make their own podcast reflecting on new material, their progress in the course, or some new case study. Better still get the students to develop their own podcast which teaches the rest of the group some new area of theory. Having to actually articulate their thinking into a public broadcast would rather concentrate the mind! That said "Audacity" is wicked! I missed my way in life - I want to be a sound engineer. Any thoughts how I might set up a 90 min examination around developing a podcast?