The Benefits of an Amplified Classroom | Technology in Education

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Hey this is Kevin and Michael from Amplivox Sound Systems and we are here today to talk about why you need an amplified classroom. In the age of the iPod, it is safe to assume that many students do not have the best hearing. According to the CDC, approximately 5.2 million children ages 6-19 suffer from permanent damage to hearing from excessive exposure to noise. It is obvious that they need assistance hearing what the teacher is saying. But according to the Institute for Enhanced Classroom Hearing, even students with perfect hearing can miss as much as 1/3 of what teachers say due to poor acoustics. They go on to list other groups of people who benefit from amplified classrooms including:

- Students with an Auditory Processing Problem
- Students with a Minimal Hearing Loss
- Students with a Severe Hearing Loss Using Personal FM Systems
- Students with a Temporary Hearing Loss Due to Ear Infections (OME)
- Students with Behavioral or Attentive Disorders Such As ADD or ADHD
- Students Learning English as a Second Language (ESOL)
- Young Children Learning Phonics and Phonemic Recognition
- Students with Perfectly Normal Hearing
- All Teachers

So basically everybody benefits from having an amplified classroom.

Studies have shown that students in amplified classrooms retain more information, have less behavioral problems, and have better test scores. A study done in Canada shows that student's in non-amplified classrooms actually lost a small percentage of their reading comprehension during the school year while the amplified classroom gained in their reading comprehension. If English is a second language for students, an amplified classroom helps even more. As the student sits farther away from the teacher, their word recognition dwindles. (Check out this graph, two-bar bar graph, percentage on left, distance on bottom). As you see, if an ESL student sits near the back, their word recognition drops nearly 40 percent in an unamplified classroom.

All the teachers who were a part of the Canadian Journal for Speech Language Pathology and Audiology said is was much easier to grab the attention of the class with the amplification system in the room. 100 percent of the teachers also said that they spent less time repeating themselves. It also helped in managing the behavior of the class so that the teacher could focus more on the curriculum. 100 percent agree that there is less interference and distractions from outside noise when using an amplification system in the classroom. 91 percent agree that you need to raise your voice less often and a whopping 100 percent STRONGLY agree that they liked the impact the system had on their teaching voice and presentation. Over 90 percent said that their voice was more flexible and sounded better than before while 100 percent strongly agreed that their voice showed less signs of strain during the day.

These statistics speak for themselves. We are going to list our resources at the end of this video and on the Youtube page, so if you want to do further research go ahead.

Although we are a pretty trustworthy group of guys, if you need further validation of the statistics we used, check out our sources that we will provide for you at the end of the video.

-Infrared- The SIR 285 is a unique sound system that uses Infrared technology to pick up your voice from the microphone from nearly anywhere in the classroom. It comes with a wall mounting bracket and a wireless mic so you can hang it on the wall and forget about it.