Sound Solutions: Poor Classroom Acoustics Are Impairing Students' Hearing and Their Ability to Learn. the Need for Audio Amplification Systems Is Coming through Loud and Clear

square of the he calls some of the squares of the other two sides. Some students will tell you that's the Pythagorean theorem. No, they're not dumb; no, they don't have attention deficit disorder; and no, their teacher doesn't enunciate poorly. In many instances, even if they sit just six feet away from the speaker, they simply can't hear. The problem isn't one of volume. In fact, what usually happens in a classroom when students say they can't hear is that the teacher speaks louder. That may be fine for vowels, but it doesn't do much for consonants--and it's generally the consonants that provide the intelligibility: An oo ee i ats o? (Can you see why that's so?) And even a loud voice isn't likely to make it to the students in the back row if the classroom has bad acoustics. The only tangible result is usually teacher vocal strain. Rather, student hearing difficulties are largely the result of three factors: * A child's auditory neurological network isn't fully developed until around age 15. For purposes of comprehension, children require louder voices and a quieter ambience than adults do. * Classrooms are noisy. There's noise from other students, from computers and printers and lights and heating systems, and from people in the hallways and traffic outside. * Students don't have the experience to guess at what they hear. If they don't know the word hypotenuse, then they can't process hearing high moose as anything but high moose--they can't make the connection. And this is exacerbated if the student isn't a native English speaker or really does have a hearing deficit. The main problem, as Debbie Tschirgi, director of educational technology programs for Educational Service District 112 in Vancouver, WA, explains in her widely referenced white paper, Classroom Amplification Systems: Understanding and Overcoming the Acoustical Barriers to Learning, is inadequate signal-to-noise ratio in US classrooms, which impedes communication. She says that while the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association recommends a classroom noise level no higher than 30 decibels, the typical classroom has noise levels that range from 41 to 51 dB. (Keep in mind that loudness is measured on a logarithmic scale: A 40-dB classroom is 10 times as loud as a 30-dB classroom.) Tschirgi's research indicates that for teachers to communicate well, their voices--or signals--should be 15 decibels more than that of the background noise, a score of plus 15. But she finds that most classrooms have signal-to-noise ratios ranging from minus 7 to plus 4. A multiyear study conducted by Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, FL, Performance Schools Equals High Performing Students, provides a summary, damning state of affairs: Research has shown that a typical classroom provides an inadequate environment when auditory learning is the primary tool of instruction. As many as one-third of all students miss 33 percent of verbal communication in a typical Hearing Is Believing Technology has come up with a solution: tools that focus voices in a way that minimizes intrusive ambient noise and gets to the intended receiver--not merely amplifying the sound, but also clarifying and directing it. 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 Innovator, comes with four infrared microphones, multimedia mute control, and a PC user interface. …

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