Podcasting In Education

I am really intrigued with podcasting in the classroom.  I have been curious ever since my Research Methods class as to whether or not podcasting would work in my own class.  In my sports medicine class I have students who are athletes and tend  to miss class at least once or twice a week.  I have also taken note that the majority of students have Iphones or Ipods with them at all times.  I have a powerpoint for every unit that I am teaching and it is posted on a class website, but if they miss class they miss out on important information that was discussed in the lecture.  The article that we read for class really lit a fire under me to not only post the powerpoints online, but to also create podcasts for my students to be able to access them on their own and stay current with the content even if they miss class.  I once I had only thought about podcasting in education as a means to provide distance learning, but I am beginning to see the benefit to using podcasts in my own high school class.  I plan on beginning to use podcasting in the spring semester and working to see if students are really benefiting from it.  I think that it is a technology that can really help students not only not fall behind on their school work, but also help fill in the blanks on information that they may be having a difficult time with.