By Joseph Hurtgen
The exhibit hall of the ISTE conference is basically like the old America On-line variety of the internet. It allows for a walking tour of every major technological corporation, which have each brought out their best guns for the affair.
Panasonic has developed an audio system for the classroom that doubles as an alert system. Really, they didn’t intend on making an alert system at all. They saw the opportunity to create a market for building classroom audio systems, started doing tests and came up with some results that immediately made their product viable.
Panasonic discovered that teachers take something like 60% less sick days when they have an audio system, which saves on paying substitute teachers and very nearly covers the cost of implementing the system. At the classroom level, teachers can speak at a normal conversation tone when they have an audio system, which is much less stressful than the old days of teaching in what felt like an extended shouting match.
On the student side of things, test scores rise significantly because, suddenly, teachers can always be heard when they speak and wind up teaching more because their voices are not strained. As a bonus, students daydream less because when they hear conversation tones, they feel much more engaged by a voice that feels as if it’s aimed specifically at them rather than catapulted from somewhere down the line.
75% of Florida schools later, teachers and administrators tell Panasonic they want a security button added to the audio system. The mic, worn around the teacher’s neck and looking sort of like a track coaches stopwatch, makes access to a security button instantaneous and always available. The button wirelessly signals a silent alert to an infrared sensor which triggers the school’s network, sending alert emails to the school and to police and other emergency responders.
At an added price, a video camera can be installed which will begin recording and sending out a feed whenever the alert goes out. The way Panasonic and school officials see it, being able to send an alert is good because, by its very presence, it acts as a deterrent from would be attackers.
Because of the effectiveness of the audio system, an increasing number of schools are wiring their classroom for sound, and at the same time are receiving increased security with a system allowing teachers to trigger alerts.
