Technology proving to be a sound investment
When Emily Sorensen’s first graders asked for directions to be repeated a number of times, or asked questions that had already been answered, she chalked it up to a lack of focus among her young, excited students. But when her room was fitted with a classroom amplification system, she realized that it wasn’t that her students were distracted —they just simply hadn't been able to hear.
“I noticed a difference right away,” said Sorensen, a teacher a Eudora’s Nottingham Elementary. “I have to repeat myself much less, and I save the energy that I would be using for my voice to use for our classroom activities and teaching.”
Sorensen is benefiting from a sound-field amplification system where a teacher wears a small, wireless microphone that transmits sound to a receiver system attached to speakers around the classroom. The system is adjusted so that the teacher’s voice is amplified to a level comfortably louder than the background noises.
She added that she wasn't the only one who noticed a difference right away —her highly perceptive students immediately noticed that there was a new gadget in their room. To satisfy the bounding curiosity, she let every child try speaking into the microphone. Even now, she occasionally lets students use it, as a special treat, when they are working in front of the class.
Teachers aren't the only ones affected by noise. Studies have found significant differences in both performance and behavior between students working in quiet conditions and students working in noisy conditions caused by anything from a loud ventilation system to traffic or playground sounds that drift into the room.
Young learners typically have short attention spans and high distractibility, which makes them ineffective at sorting speech from noise. Figure-ground discrimination is the skill that allows listeners to pay attention to a specific sound — such as a teacher's voice — or to ignore or "listen through" a distracting background noise. Hearing and language development experts report that these skills do not mature until approximately age 13, so young children require speech to be much louder before they can recognize words as accurately as adults can.
“If the skills of hearing are not fully developed until age 13,” said Eudora Superintendent Marty Kobza, “that spells challenges for more than half of our district’s students and their teachers. A child who is unable to hear a teacher’s lesson or instructions will struggle in learning new concepts and following along during a regular day of activity.”
The research, along with the positive experiences of Sorensen and other teachers at Nottingham and West Elementary who have been test driving the technology, has convinced Kobza and members of the local school board that the system is an important investment that will directly benefit student achievement. As a result, the district is hoping to include this type of system in the classrooms of any new schools that would be built if the bond issue passes this fall.
Sorensen is hoping for just that — or, at the very least, that she will be able to keep her sound amplification system.
“Honestly, I don't know if I could go back (to a room without the system),” she said. “It's amazing the difference it's made.”
