The Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) has just released Classcaster.

Classcaster is a blogging system with podcasting built-in. The Classcaster system is designed to be provide course-related blogs with integrated podcasting to law faculty at CALI member schools. Bloggers on the Classcaster system can create podcasts using any telephone. Faculty just dial in to Classcaster, enter a phone number and pin and record a call of any length. When they hangup a Metaweblog API is used to transfer the MP3 to the blog and create a draft post that includes links for downloads and an embedded Flash MP3 player for students to download or listen to the file. The blog generates valid RSS2 with enclosures so students can subscribe to the feed and get the podcasts with their favorite aggregators.

Classcaster is built out of open source parts and CALI intends to make the assemblage available to the educational world.