Educational value of Podcasting

Once again, I find myself learning something new. I am an avid iPod user. I have playlists for everything including work out mixes and just relaxin'! I am on iTunes all of the time but have never really paid attention to Podcasts. Upon further investigation, there are podcasts available for just about every subject that you can imagine. I happened upon a podcast that my daughter now loves, The Crazy Dave's Kid Show.
So, the question remains however what are the educational implications of podcasting. Podcasting, if produced by the students, offers an opportunity to develop verbal communication/public speaking skills. Students are in a position to choose a topic and dependent upon the format, expound upon it. This could be used as a means of differentiating instruction for those students that have difficulty with written expression, perhaps even as an alternative form of assessment.
Some of the creative ways, I thought of using podcasts were:

• As rainy day activities-students would have the option of downloading activities such as classroom treasure hunts
• Reteach/Remediation or Enrichment-Podcasts could be be used as means to reteach certain skills and subject areas. They could be provided also for those students that want to explore a topic more
• Substitute Teacher-For those days that I know I would be absent. Directions could be left for the substitute and activities could be podcast for the students as well.

Your thoughts???