My collegue (I couldn't make it, I must admit) visited an Apple seminar on the solution they have on offer for creating podcasts from lectures. He was very enthousiastic and I can easily understand why. What they have on offer is an integrated solution. Using a Mac Mini and a video camera a teacher can start his recording. On completion it is automatically transferred to the media server and converted into a number of formats automatically. When complete you can offer it as streaming video, but also in a podcast of MP3 or of course video...

It is a basic solution, but offers plenty of facilities to connect extra devices and facilities.

Out of curiousity I just tried out what would happen if I password protected my podcast. This was no problem for iTunes, it simply asked for the username/password and started the downloading. This means teachers do not have to worry about having their podcasts open for everybody to see.