Duke Univeristy is hosting a symposium on podcasting Sept 27-28. Elements of this should be available online...
There seems to be great interest in integrating podcasts and RSS feeds into the learning mix. Apparently podcasts can be used to distribute content other than mere audio files - text files such as pdfs can be pushed as well. I see the ability to push content as a plus - this is why I've leaned heavily on listservs to notify students of class meetintg schedules, assignment due dates, etc. It removes the variable of attentativeness - "I didn't know this was due; was it in the syllabus"? - a really basic level of grokking that some students just either can't master, or aren't motivated sufficiently to take on the responsibility of self-direction (rememer that I've dealt primarily with community college students to date).
Although the hype for push technology came and went in the early 90's (remember those desktop clients that sucked down news feeds, stock tickers and other crap that cluttered your desktop, consumed bandwidth on the LAN, and just generally distracted you from doing actual work?), RSS and podcasting, along with legacy technologies like list serves, seem to denote not only a need but perhaps an actual desire to have aggregrated content sentto you, rather than performing traditional inet hunter/gatherer googling scavenger hunts.
