Lincoln Elementary Visit

I recently attended a tour of Lincoln Elementary in Cedar Falls, Ia. I was really impressed with their effective use of technology in the classrooms. We saw 6th grade students creating structures on an architectural program and 1st graders receiving instruction on an interactive white board. These were both wonderful inspiring things, but to my surprise I was really impressed with a much simpler form of technology. The voice enhancement system in each classroom is a relatively inexpensive technological tool that has immense benefits. I am going to be a special education teacher and I am sure that technology like this will help students with hearing impairments. But voice amplification in the classroom setting has far more practical uses than the just the one previously mentioned. No matter where someone is in the classroom, they will be able to hear the teacher. The students can hear each other better too. And as a future teacher, the prospect of not having to yell all day long in order to be heard is comforting. My daughter was scared of her fourth grade teacher because her teacher would yell all day long. For a child that came from a home without a lot of yelling, it seemed like her teacher was mad all the time. I approached the teacher and talked to her about it after observing her in the classroom for a morning. She said, that she had been told that before and was working on it. She had just gotten into a bad habit and was struggling to break free from it. She also said that she got headaches, throat aches, and was exhausted by the end of the day. It would of been much better for the entire class if she would of had a voice enhancement system.
The use of other technologies like closed captioning for the hearing impaired can be a useful tool for all of the students in a classroom. Watch a video below about students discussing the benefits of the use of microphones and closed captioning in education.