Podcasts of lectures to "enhance mobile access to content"? Books on tape I can imagine, but most lecturers, myself included should be prevented from putting lectures into the ears of student while they drive. Snore. But I do think podcasts have a place in mobile learning. What about a podcast that offers a case study that a student could play in the car with his/her family and discuss. 3 minutes of case study and a car ride in which one knew what the family was thinking. Lectures on podcasts seems like still using the computer as a typewriter.
I'm working from the University of Minnesota Crookston today, and when I sat down in the lab to answer my email, I was astonished at the number of instant messages that announced themselves on the public computer I was using. Every few seconds, another person was announced as having logged on. Research shows that whole groups of people spend much of their lives wired over their phones or blackberries or email--messaging a web of people who are connected to another web. I wonder what the implications are of this kind of connectivity for the future of education. Certainly there are whole new kinds of learning communities emerging.