Integrating Podcasting

I read an exerpt from a book by Will Richardson this week all about podcasting.  Honestly I'm not a huge podcast follower.  Maybe it's my age; maybe it's my naivete of technology; maybe it's my busy life with kids and school.  Whatever the reason I was glad to be educated in the realm of podcasting to see how I might be able to incorporate this tool into a future classroom.
My favorite part of the chapter, the part that perk my ears up and made me hold my breath for a second, was the phrase "students teaching students."  Awesome, right?  The idea of having students who understand the material, the curriculum, the process recording themselves to help others understand is phenomenal.  Why?  First, teaching someone else is the true test of showing that you understand the material.  Second, having someone your age, someone who understands you, someone other than your teacher explaining an idea can often unlock your understanding of a concept because they can find connections that work for you.  Third, help when you are home and struggling with the homework.  There is nothing worse than feeling like you understand the lecture, followed the practice problems and then get your homework out after dinner and it looks completely foreign.  What do you do?  Ask your parents for help with Algebra?  Probably not.  Call your teacher?  Not likely.  Scour the internet for something similar and hope that it translates to the problem your struggling with?  Maybe.  But open a podcast that a classmate created that directly reflects the material and problems you are working on and you are right back on track.
There can be incentives for students who create the podcasts.  Likely they will be the students who are ahead of the class anyways so give them suggestions of which problems they should demonstrate (if you assign the even problems you could give them the odds).  They can do them a day in advance and you can monitored them to make sure they are accurate and appropriate.  Work with the principal whoever else is necessary to see what kind of school credit they can receive for their additional work.