June 2007 — Features
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Sound Solutions
Clark enthuses about the changes in the school. Teachers, their voices saved from overwork, tell her they have as much energy in sixth period as they do in first period. Some of her shy bilingual students have taken to speaking with the microphone. “It made them more confident,” she says. She has seen a huge gain in test scores. Sometimes, she says, teachers take their microphones with them to lunch and forget to turn them back on when they return to class—but the students invariably tell them. Ocoee has audio speakers in classrooms, in the band and chorus rooms, in the media center, and in the gym. “It has made the biggest difference in the world,” Clark says. “Teachers would overwhelmingly pick this as the best technology they have.”
Asking the KEY QUESTIONS
IN HER WHITE PAPER on classroom sound systems, Debbie Tschirgi, educational technology program director for Educational Service District 112 in Vancouver,WA, advises schools to ask manufacturers of sound technology some important questions before making a purchase. For example:
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Do you provide infrared or radio-frequency systems?
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How do you address the masking of the weaker, higher-frequency sounds, such as consonant sounds?
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What are the options for microphones? Where can they be placed? How many can be used simultaneously?
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How can your product tie in with other systems in the classroom, for example, computers, VCRs, and DVD players?
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What are the options for speakers? Where can they be placed?
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What’s the average life of batteries used in the microphones?
Measured Progress
Bruce Bebb says that in the near future people will find this kind of audio enhancement as natural and essential as good lighting. He’s the marketing communications director of LightSpeed, based in Tualatin, OR, and a former elementary school principal. LightSpeed’s Infrared Classroom Amplification Technology (REDCAT) device is another wireless infrared classroom ampli- fication system. It costs about $1,000 a classroom.
“You basically pull it out of a box and set it anywhere in the room within minutes,” Bebb says. One flat-panel speaker (22 inches long, 10.5 inches wide, and 3.25 inches deep) projects the sound, but Bebb says that “you are hard-pressed to point to where the sound source is.” His demos have ended much as Snyder’s and Clark’s: After seeing the device at work, everyone in the audience wants one.
Bebb cites the Trost Study, an independent study of Light- Speed systems installed in Canby, OR’s Trost Elementary School, carried out by the Canby School District. Some of its findings from amplified classrooms:
- 35 percent higher first-grade scores on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS)
- 35 percent higher words-per-minute reading scores by fourth- and fifth-graders
- 21 percent higher scores on the Technology Enhanced Student Assessment, a standardized test given by the Oregon Department of Education
- 72 percent decrease in teacher redirections
- 43 percent decrease in off-task student behaviors
Those numbers would come as no surprise to Patrick Mahaffey, a third-grade teacher at Carlsbad, CA’s K-6 Olivenhain Pioneer Elementary School. He’s been using an audio system from Califone International for years. He can offer confirmation of the relief that audio systems give to teachers’ voices—his voice no longer gets worn out the way it once did. He also observes that children with attention deficit disorder “tend to have a little longer period of focus time” with the amplified sound. His only issue is that he sometimes forgets to turn off the microphone when he goes to counsel a student one-on-one; other students point out the error soon enough.
Another Califone user is Steve Lewey, the project manager in the technology department of Lake Washington School District, just north of Seattle. He’s had the company’s speakers installed in every classroom in the district—1,400 of them. The district uses the speakers as part of its projection system—computer, ceilingmounted projector, DVD player, and VCR. “The system as a whole,” says Lewey, “has got the students more engaged.”
Califone develops products for auditoriums as well as classrooms. For example, the Presentation Pro 300 line—an amplified 30-watt speaker with built-in receiver, microphone, tripod, remote, and case—sells for about $365. “We’ve got 60 years of making audio products specifically for schools,” says Tim Ridgway, the California-based company’s vice president of marketing. Ridgway explains that the amplification systems keep the sound from bouncing off the classroom walls or ceiling, and instead keep it focused on the students. “What that means,” he says, “is that it effectively increases the signal-to-noise ratio.”
Sounds Good to Everyone
A study released this past March, “Improving the Classroom Environment: Classroom Amplification Systems,” done by Miami-Dade County Public Schools, spells out the general benefits of audio systems to students and teachers, namely, increases in student attention, participation, productivity, comprehension, and on-task behaviors, and a decrease in discipline problems.
The report also alludes to additional studies of the health benefits for teachers in sound-amplified classroms, one that found a reduction in teacher sick days because of voice, jaw, or throat problems, and another that reported a 25 percent decrease in teacher absenteeism.
Debbie Tschirgi’s white paper provides more impressive specifics. Tschirgi cites a study conducted by Laurie Allen, an educational audiologist in Dubuque, IA, who surveyed 334 students in grades 1 to 6 about amplified classrooms. The study found that:
- 93 percent of students liked when the teacher used the sound system.
- 95 percent said it was easier to hear the teacher when the speakers were on.
- 87 percent said they do better when the speakers are on.
Tschirgi points out that although classroom amplification systems have long been used to help hearing-impaired students, the research indicates that there are benefits in store for students with normal hearing ability also. She writes, “The rationale…is simple: How well children hear their teacher affects how well they learn…. Sound amplification is a cost effective way to improve classroom acoustics so that all students can learn to their potential.”
As ever, though, the best testimony comes from the audience of student users. Cassandra, a sixth-grader at Ocoee Middle School, says that the poor acoustics in her in elementary school classroom caused her “to miss a lot of things,” even though she has no medical hearing problems and usually sat near the front of the room. After class, she’d ask the teacher to repeat some of the information, but it wasn’t as good as getting it the first time. Alexis, an Ocoee eighth-grader, says that in addition to all the noise in her elementary school classroom—such as air conditioning— sometimes teachers would turn their backs when writing on the blackboard, and it would be even more difficult to hear them.
At Ocoee, things are different. Alexis says that when she first came into an audio-enhanced room, “I was pretty surprised— you could hear throughout the whole entire room.” And Cassandra says that audio enhancement “made note-taking a lot easier for me.” She explains that particularly in science class, students have to watch PowerPoint presentations and listen to the teacher at the same time; audio enhancement makes it easier to do that. “It really does help the kids out,” she says. “It really does make a difference.”
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Neal Starkman is a freelance writer based in Seattle.
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