Research topic: Podcasts the future of education?

Description:
        In my research paper I will focus on the new media medium of podcasts. As an avid listener of many different podcasts that span different subjects I gained new knowledge in several different areas. This has led me to wonder if Podcasting is going to be an important tool in the future in regards to education. As it stands now, people's attention span is drastically lower than what it was ten or 15 years ago. Children and teens(myself included) no longer have the patience to sit down and read assignments or articles. What we do have patience for is to listen to music, and the future I picture is one where professors and news outlets put a large portion of their assignments and programming in audio files and therefore making it easier for children and teens to learn the information that they will need to succeed.
 
        I will approach this topic by looking for studies in which podcasting has been implemented in the coursework of schools and how it effected the grades of students. I will also look at the growth of podcasting as a whole and the pro and cons of the medium.