How do I intend to help improve my school's acoustics to better enable learning in the classroom? Good question! Something that I have noticed during my 4 years here is the terrible acoustics that seem to be in almost every classroom in the school. In Slocum and Weaver, the high ceilings cause quite a problem while in Hunter, the cementer floor, walls and ceilings in every classroom cause the noise disruption.

Concrete is a great material to use when the goal is to keep sound inside one room, however because it is a thick, hard surface, it reflects sound back in the direction it came from; this causes reverberation. While it is known that two hard, flat walls can cause a lot of reverberation, there is not much that can be done because almost all rooms are shaped in that way. However, the material used can really improve the acoustics of a space.

Emma Willard has already taken steps to improve the acoustics in classrooms. Rugs, or any soft, fluffy material, is great at absorbing sound. Instead of reflecting sound back into the room, rugs absorb the sound which decreases the amount of echo in a space. Most of Emma Willard School's classrooms have rugs to counteract the high ceilings and the echo effect that these high ceilings create. While this is a step in the right direction, it still is not enough. The rugs in most of the classrooms now are old and worn, making them flat and hard on the ground. When rugs become worn out, their sound absorbing qualities drastically decrease so in order for a rug to be an effective echo decreasing material, it cannot be thin and hard like the ones in the classrooms now.

In the next few months, I will be studying the effects that different materials have on the level of reverberation in a space. I will be studying how to improve current classrooms by adding materials and what materials work best for the job of eliminating echo and improving overall acoustics. Check back in the coming months for updates on my research!

Something that is extremely new and not very well known is the hearing aid technology that Apple has created. Apple, arguably the largest tech company in the world, has been working on making their products more accessible for everyone, including the disabled. They have specific features for the visually impaired, hearing impaired, those with physical and motor impairments, and those with learning and literacy impairments. Apple has worked with top manufacturers to create hearing aids that are designed specifically for apple products. The goal is to make using your phone or other apple device as easy as possible, no matter who you are. The hearing aids have Bluetooth capability, as do many new hearing aids now, and can be controlled directly from your iPhone, iPad, or apple watch. This makes adjusting hearing aids a lot easier as one hearing aid setting does not fit all noise levels and backgrounds.

There are also many new apps that you can buy in the app store that were created for those with hearing loss. Some new apps allow a person to use the phone microphone that you speak into while talking on the phone as a microphone that feeds the sounds directly into the users hearing aids. This is similar to an FM system(which I wrote about in a previous post) except the main difference is that this app makes group conversations even easier. There is no speaker set that needs to be passed from person to person in order for the hearing impaired person to follow conversation. This app lets users put their phone down in the middle of the table and the microphone picks up the conversation and feeds it directly to the ears of the person with hearing loss. There are other apps that also translate sound into words and act as a captioning device for those with hearing problems. Today’s technology is making the world far more accessible to those with disabilities and it is really opening up new doors and creating connections between people that were not there or would not have occurred before.

Hearing loss can have infinite implications on a person’s life. The first hearing aid was not invented until 1898 and hearing aids were not accessible to the general public until the late 20th century.  Since 1898, our technological advancements in hearing aid options have overwhelmingly increased. Today there are multiple options for hearing aids, some can go behind your ear and loop into the ear canal while others go directly into the ear canal and are virtually invisible. The average cost per hearing aid is $4,600 and not all insurance companies cover hearing aid costs; my parents’ insurance did not and they had to change to an insurance company that would cover hearing aid expenses but still, our insurance does not cover the entire cost and my parents have to pay a portion of the price out of pocket. This is concerning as many people who need hearing aids are unable to afford them and therefore, miss huge parts of life just because they are unable to hear.

Besides the obvious assistive technology for hearing, hearing aids, there are an abundance of other options to help people hear. Hearing assistive technology such as audio loops (or hearing loop), FM, and infrared systems are options that can work with or without hearing aids.
• The audio or hearing loop is a wire that circles a room and is connected to the sound system. The loop transmits the sound electromagnetically and the signal is then picked up by the telecoil in the hearing aid. It is easy as pressing a button on the hearing aid to start picking up the signal and there is no additional equipment needed.
• An infrared system uses invisible light beams to carry sound from the source to a personal receiver. (The sound source must be in the line of sight.) Different types of attachments may be connected to the personal receiver such as a neckloop or a behind-the-ear silhouette inductor. The telecoil then picks up sound from the receiver via the attachment. I own a neckloop and while it is nice to be able to stream music directly into my ears without taking off my hearing aids, the neckloop is not the most reliable connection wise and must be extremely close to my hearing aids, not making it one of my favorite devices to wear.
• An FM system works similarly, but sound is conveyed though radio waves to a personal receiver. I used an FM system all through my elementary and middle school years and have some hilarious stories to tell. Some of my teachers loved it, saying they felt like a rock star wearing the microphone that made sure I heard everything they were saying in the classroom, while others hated it and thought of it as a nuisance to wear with all its wires. Either way, most of my teachers forgot they were wearing it at least once. I have heard everything from a teacher going to the bathroom to two teachers talking badly about another teacher in the teacher lounge. An FM system is not perfect and I have even received radio waves from construction workers across the road, meaning instead of hearing my teacher talking about the lesson, I was listening to questions about how to place the beam onto the platform in the right way as not to damage the foundation.
These devices help people to hear and understand better in many situations where acoustics are poor, background noise is bothersome, and there is a long distance from the speaker however none of them can replace perfectly working ears.


For people with severe to profound hearing loss, surgery can also be an option. Hearing loss caused by congenital absence of ear canal or failure of the ear canal to be open at birth, congenital absence, malformation, or dysfunction of the middle ear structures, may all possibly be surgically corrected.


A surgery to resolve hearing loss usually involves inserting a cochlear implant. A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin (see picture).

 The implant works in the following way:
First, a microphone picks up sound from the environment and then a speech processor selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone. A transmitter and receiver/stimulator receive signals from the speech processor and convert them into electric impulses. An electrode array, which is a group of electrodes that collects the impulses from the stimulator, then sends them to different regions of the auditory nerve creating artificial hearing.

Looking to the future, there may come a time where hearing loss is completely cured and anyone who has hearing loss can have their hearing restored to a normal, hearing level. Scientists are working with stem cells to figure out a way to make that happen. They are also researching animals, specifically zebra fish and chickens, because these animals have the ability to regenerate the tiny hairs in the ear that make hearing possible. Scientists want to know how these animals can do that and find a way to replicate the process in humans.