A piece in the Boston Globe about podcasting class lectures and whether this is will be an obstacle to learning.
Of course, there's another issue, which is whether it's a gimmick that will fade away. Reading this discussion reminds me of how people got excited about the ways in which they believed phonographs, film, radio, VCRs and the web would transform if not eliminate the very idea of the classroom.
The problem often seems to be that technological changes are jammed into old structures and narratives since that's what we know. Dramatic change can happen, but is more likely to emerge in ways and contexts we don't expect.
I would also note that it's much easier for a newspaper to write a story about a professor making mp3s than it is to write about something like tagging. The way the traditional media are set up doesn't really make it easy to talk about developments that are highly decentralized, open source, and ubiquitous. What's the story? Who's the protagonist?
