June 2007 — Features
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Sound Solutions
One provider of classroom audio technology is Audio Enhancement, which has a manufacturing relationship with Panasonic. Using an Audio Enhancement system, teachers speak into a microphone, and speakers transmit the voice throughout the classroom. Teachers can also hook up the system to computers, DVD players, VCRs, interactive whiteboards, and just about any other classroom tool. They can capture audio and put it on the internet. They can even tie everything into the school’s public address system.
For example, Audio Enhancement’s CAE-100W classroom audio system, called “The Innovator,” comes with four infrared microphones, multimedia mute control, and a PC user interface. Teachers can use a remote control to modulate the volume of their own microphone, the students’ microphones, and the auxiliary inputs. The entire product consists of four ceiling speakers, a receiver, handheld student microphones, a pendant teacher microphone, a dome sensor, a cable, and a charger. It costs about $1,200 a classroom.
So, for about a grand, the teacher can always be heard clearly, anywhere in the classroom. When students participating in discussions use the microphone, they too can be heard clearly, anywhere in the classroom. And the same is true of any audiovisual presentation, from films to tapes to podcasts.
“[The sound system] wasn’t just making it louder and blaring. He was talking very naturally. I thought,Wow, this is making a difference.”—Kate Clark, Ocoee Middle School
Interestingly, one person who needed to be convinced of the need for the technology is now the company’s vice president of emerging technology, Jim Snyder, who was previously the CTO of Lake County Schools in Florida. “When I first heard about [these systems],” he says, “I said, ‘No way; the teacher doesn’t need a microphone.’” But the act of installing one into classrooms made a believer out of Snyder. Lake County teachers who tried it out on a demo basis didn’t want it removed: "Everyone who used it swore by it,” he says. The district’s schools found that teachers’ absentee rates were down because the teachers had more energy and weren’t harming their voices.
Another doubter turned convert is Kate Clark, the principal at Ocoee Middle School in Florida. Ocoee is about 10 miles north of the Disney complex, with more than 1,700 students. The school began using Audio Enhancement systems in the 2000-2001 school year. Like Snyder, Clark was skeptical.
“I was a real naysayer at first,” she says. “It was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of.” But then she attended a meeting about the new product in a conference room, and the speaker was turning the system on and off. “It wasn’t just making it louder and blaring,” she says. “He was talking very naturally. I thought, Wow, this is making a difference.” She began looking at the research and soon became a proponent.
Ocoee tried out the system in two very different places: in an old science room with wood cabinetry and hard surfaces, and in a portable classroom with carpets. Regardless of the surface areas, the audio was distinctly enhanced. “It was phenomenal,” Clark says. Both teachers got to keep their systems beyond the planned two weeks.
