When we think about ways to use podcasts in our classrooms, many teachers immediately jump to the idea that students can still listen to lectures even if they are absent. Pair that with a power point, the students can easily make up missed classes. This is a beneficial technique, especially when teachers use power points as visuals rather than drawing on the white board (there would be no way for students to see that material first hand). However, there are other ways of using podcasts in the classroom.
I thought of a few other ways podcasts can be used, aside from recording our own lectures. The first idea I have is to have students listen to podcasts from other teachers. This way they can gain a new perspective on the material. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, students do not understand our way of explaining the concepts. If we have our students listen to a way someone else explains the concept, the students may understand more readily. New viewpoints can also give a fresh perspective, to help students apply the knowledge they understand to alternate situations. Podcasts are available at sites such as, http://www.learnoutloud.com/contents/LearnOutLoud.com-Podcasts/9/21, http://education.podcast.com/, and http://epnweb.org/index.php?openpod=18#18.
Another way to use podcasts in the classroom is to have students create their own for specific topics. Often, the most effective way to learn is to teach the material to someone else. Through podcasts, students can teach others about the material, and then refer back their recorded podcasts for revision. By the end of the year, there will be a full curriculum of podcasts, and they may be used to help give the following year of classes a new perspective. I think podcasts would be very beneficial when used in education because it gives students a new way to teach other students about a specific concept as well as giving them a different teaching strategy to learn through, rather than reading out of a textbook for a different perspective on the content.
Of course, the biggest issue with podcasts would be getting the students access to them. As the reading discussed, one easy way is to create a blog at wordpress.com and install PodPress plugin (Ovadia 2008). This will allow you to link podcasts to your blog, and allow students to subscribe to the blog so that they can receive notifications when a new podcast is added. I do not think that students will have a rough time with this as they live immersed in technology every day. The biggest problem would probably be gaining access to technology to record lectures. Either a teacher would have to re-do the lectures by the computer with a microphone or find some way of recording effectively in the classroom. Having students record podcasts may be difficult as well, because all students (or most students) would need to have access to a computer with a microphone.
References:
Ovadia, Micah. (2007-2008). PoducateMe. Retrieved from http://www.poducateme.com/.
Science Teaching eProfile 
You have some really good ideas of how to utalize podcasts. My only problem is that I am hesitant to require students to listen to podcasts outside of school. At least at my school, not all students have internet access at home. In theory those students could use school or library computers, but I would worry that those computers might have wierd rules that block podcast sites.