Podcast potential

It was disappointing to see another story with a limited appreciation of the educational and pedagogic uses of podcasting ("Podcasts: enhancing or replacing normal lectures", 25 February). The thinking that automatically links "podcasting" with "lectures" suggests a lack of understanding of the potential in this area.

Podcasting, or digitally enhanced pedagogy, allows access to key voices at the heart of the learner experience, irrespective of time and place. There are myriad ways in which cheap, easy-to-design audio and video media interventions can be used to seed independent learning activity. We need to be more inventive than subjecting learners to hour-long monologues that often struggle to engage them at the best of times.

Jethro Newton, University of Chester, Chair, Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group.