BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
Students at Ecole Alliance St-Joseph in Chelmsford are learning reading, writing and arithmetic in the classroom of the future.
A classroom sound system called FrontRow was installed in every classroom in the new 475-student French Catholic school before it opened in September 2005. Principal Andre Paquette raves about the benefits.
The children are much more relaxed and can concentrate on their work because they don’t feel like their teacher is yelling at them, he says.
“The microphone system creates a sense of calm in the classroom. Because the teacher speaks in a low voice and very calmly, that feeling spreads throughout the classroom.”
The FrontRow system consists of a wireless microphone that hangs around the teacher’s neck and four speakers mounted on the ceiling. It costs about $1,600 per classroom, although bulk discounts are available.
The sound system is not overly loud, but projects the teacher’s voice at about 70 decibels, which is slightly louder than the background noise in an average classroom, says Mike Dahab, territory manager for FrontRow.
“As we educate people a little bit more about it, they start to realize that as essential as lights are for students to see, sound systems are for students to hear,” he says.
“A teacher would never walk into the classroom and start writing with the lights out, but yet they’re walking in and speaking at a level where students at the back of the room can’t hear.”
Le Conseil scolaire catholique de Nouvel-Ontario also plans to install the system in any future school buildings it puts up.
Teachers are noticing it’s easier to do their job with the sound system, says Paquette.
“When you’re teaching to a class of 30 students and you’re having to force your voice, you have headaches and you can develop laryngitis,” he says.
“The teachers here have not been absent because of sore throats and none of them have lost their voices because they’re using the system.”
The Rainbow District School Board has also started using the sound system. As of of the fall of 2005, FrontRow was installed in all of the school board’s Grade 1 to 3 classrooms.
Before then, the school board used the system in individual classrooms with hard-of-hearing children.
Hillary Holmes, co-ordinator of special needs for the school board, says, “Students who were having attention or behaviour problems and students who had a cold or ear infection during the year seemed to really respond well to the sound system being in the classroom.”
The school board decided to install the sound systems in Grade 1 to 3 classrooms because children in these grades are learning language skills and need to be able to hear.
The French public board, le Conseil Scolaire Public du Grand Nord de l’Ontario, has the systems in classrooms where there is a hearing impaired student and uses them during concerts for people with hearing loss.
The Sudbury Catholic District School Board does not currently have the system in any of its schools, although there are plans in the works to purchase classroom sound systems in the future.
FrontRow is also useful for shy students when they make presentations, says Paquette. The teacher can give them the microphone so the whole class can hear them speak.
The technology is “smart” and automatically turns off when the teacher leaves the classroom so students can’t hear their teacher’s private conversations through the speakers, he says.
“The system is very user friendly. We can also plug a radio or television into it. When students are watching documentaries or DVDs, they can plug the television into it, and the kids call it a surround sound system,” says Paquette.
