Student Podcasting

In an extraordinarily interesting piece published recently in the The Chronicle, John M. Lang wrote a piece virtues and defects of student podcasting. I confess the idea hadn't occurred to me, perhaps because of the time commitment involved, but it's an intriguing possibility, particularly for distance ed. Lang tried it out, I gather in a face-to-face class, and made it a single assignment, which makes sense. It worked reasonably well the first time around except that  (a) the fact that the students all reflected on the same reading led to a certain same-y quality in the podcasts and (b) students had not been made aware enough of the elements of a quality podcast. Even so, it seemed to me that this might be another way of shrinking distance between students--especially if done early in the term--in a DE class. This might be particularly useful with younger/tech savvier groups.