Secondary Classroom Tech

The ability to hear an instructor is critical to students’ success. No matter what their age, students who struggle to hear and comprehend words due to hearing loss or other issues often suffer from delayed speech and language skills, lower grades/academic achievement, social isolation, and poor self-esteem. These things all contribute to success, or lack of it, later in life.

Studies have shown that students who sit in the back row of their classrooms miss 30% of what their teachers say because they cannot properly hear the lesson taught at the front of the classroom. When combined with the fact that hearing loss is on the rise in young people (an estimated 12.5% of students aged 6–19 have permanent damage to their hearing from excessive exposure to noise, according to studies conducted by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association), it is obvious that students need assistance to hear better in their classrooms.

When properly amplified, sound in a classroom improves students’ attention and thus their interactions increase. In other words, students learn and retain more through increased hearing ability. Classroom amplification systems allow students to hear more clearly and learn more. These systems improve speech intelligibility, comprehension and retention through proper engineering. Studies have also found that test scores can improve from 10%–30% with amplified sound in classrooms. - Rebecca Paddick