For teachers meanwhile, noisy classrooms mean raising the voice to be heard, which in turn often leads to vocal hoarseness, pain and in the case of temporary voice loss, time off work.
These reasons are why soundfield technology was born - to clearly amplify the teacher’s voice and, in doing so, help students to hear and understand directions more easily. This in turn leads to improved student performance.
Proven soundfield benefits
Students’ listening and learning skills improve.
Less speaker repetition required.
Enhanced class instruction and management.
Less teacher vocal strain.
For more on these benefits, read The MARRS Project: Mainstream Amplification Resource Room Study.
Today's problems
Despite soundfield’s benefits, there are very real issues associated with traditional soundfield systems. These range from in-class echoes and feedback to overly complex settings and incompatibility with FM systems for hearing impaired students. (Read more about these problems.)
This situation even led The Acoustical Society of America, in its position statement on sound amplification in the classroom, to state that sound amplification “increases rather than reduces overall classroom sound levels” and that “improperly maintained microphones and loudspeakers or poor user skills can cause even poorer speech communication than no amplification systems".
Dynamic SoundField by Phonak ushers in a new era in classroom amplification, solving today’s soundfield issues by offering industry-leading sound performance, fully automated settings, and hassle-free integration with Phonak’s FM systems for hearing impaired children. Just plug it in, turn on and teach!
