It's Spring Break... Should I Go to Aruba or Blog About Wireless Microphones in the Classroom?

A few days ago, while visiting my parents over spring break, I came across an article in our local newspaper about the use of wireless microphones in the classroom. The microphones and surround sound style speakers were originally used in classrooms with hearing-impaired students. The speakers are not loud, but rather the teacher's voice is heard at it's normal volume from several different places in the classroom. This would mean that even if a child is sitting in the back of the room they will hear their teacher's voice as if they were sitting in the front of the room. One of our wealthier suburbs decided to try using the system in all of their classrooms, and they found that the students have been more focused. The benefit of students' ability to hear every word that their teacher says, even if the student is talking or if there is a lot of noise in the classroom, is that students are much less likely to misunderstand directions or miss an important part of the lesson due to not being able to hear the teacher well. An expert from the PA Speech-Language-Hearing Association explains that children, unlike adults, have more trouble filling in the blanks when they miss a word or two of what their teacher is saying. When adults hear "Today we'll ____ about frogs. ____ live in the jungle, where there is a lot of rain, and it is very ____.," we can usually make some pretty good guesses that "learn," "frogs," and "hot," should fit into the blanks, but for children, especially young ones, this is a difficult or impossible task. The system is expensive, so for now, it's not going to be something we see in every classroom around the country any time soon, but prices for new and newish technologies do fall, so one can hope that sometime within the next decade, if these systems are proven to be as effective as they seem to be, all schools will be able to choose to put them in their classrooms.

I really think that this is a great technology. Most people know how aggravating it can be to need to hear what a teacher or an employer is saying, but be unable to do so. I can imagine how much kids miss when they can't hear the teacher, and would love to see something like this implemented in as many schools as possible. Although the article doesn't go into it, I also think that this sound system could be really helpful with children who have attention problems. For those of us who have ADD, it can be all too tempting to just zone out completely if you can't hear what you're teacher is lecturing about, or to simply zone out because general lecturing can be boring and the teacher might not notice our trips to la-la land anyway. If I had constantly had my teachers' voices right beside me, I think I would have taken fewer of those trips as a child.