Schools

INTERVENTIONS TO IMPROVE THE ACOUSTIC AND DECREASE NOISE IN THE CLASSROOM ARE NOT TOO EXPENSIVE!!

In recent years, thanks to an European awareness campaign on the theme, Sound Education, thousands of interventions were made in English, Swedish, Dutch and German schools. But now even Italy runs to shelter:

An example of this is the acoustic reclamation of classrooms and gym at the Cavalieri Junior School, the first school in Italy entirely reclaimed acoustically.

With the participation of citizens and the correct choices of Public Administrations in financing projects to improve the acoustic quality of the school buildings, it is possible to create an acoustically appropriate space in classrooms, canteens, or laboratories, etc.

The acquisition of school knowledge requires a long and delicate process ,whose path and outcome are predominantly governed by the capacity of teachers , but alongside these even the physical environmental conditions within which unwinds have an influence which is not negligible, that can take a considerable weight.


One of these conditions to the contour, somewhat neglected in our country is the acoustic quality of classrooms, whose inadequacy under this aspect is instead for several years the subject of controls and systematic interventions in many other countries. One of this condition, is the classrooms’ acoustic quality. A bad acoustics of classrooms can have very negative consequences for students and teachers: slowing down or even stopping the learning process in many early; inducing fatigue and generalized frustration in seconds. A bad acoustics means in the first place, disturbance and impairment of verbal communication, definable quantitatively by measuring the loss of speech intelligibility, in other words lowering, more or less sensitive, of the percentage of words correctly understood by a listener, with respect to the entirety of the words spoken by the speaker.

THE ACOUSTIC PROBLEMS OF CLASSROOMS


But what are the physical factors that can affect the acoustic quality of a classroom, making it difficult to perceive and understand the teachers' speeches? The main ones are substantially three:

1) the time of environmental reverberation
2) the background noise in the classroom
3) the distance from the teacher

THE REVERBERATION TIME


In any closed environment the sound you hear is the reverberation time (TR), that means the time during which a certain amount of sound energy continues to exist within a closed environment after that the sound signal has been interrupted. The longer this time the greater is the contribution of the reflected sound compared to the direct one. An excess of reverb sound, with respect to the direct path, means appreciably affect the speech intelligibility, making difficult the distinction of the individual voice signals and pauses that separate a word from the other. This is the factor of acoustic pollution more serious and widespread in the classrooms. In all countries that have so far dealt with this matter, its presence and its level have proved in fact to be the main cause of the reduction of the speech intelligibility. 

THE BACKGROUND NOISE


The background noise usually causes a worsening of the adverse effects associated with the problems of the reverberation and the distance from the teacher. The noise of the existing fund in a classroom has origin from the sound context in which it is inserted, and numerous sources can therefore contribute to determine its presence and level.

Usually the main ones are:

1) The sources of noise inside the school building: the activity in the adjacent classrooms , in corridors and gyms ; the operation of installations inside; The sources of noise inside the house: the buzz of the students, the creaking of the benches and chairs, the environmental air-conditioning systems, etc.
2) The external noise sources: oad traffic, aeronautics and rail traffic; the industrial and commercial installations, the road works, etc.;

The higher the level of background noise determined by one or more of these sound sources, the greater will be for students , in relation to the voice signal of the teacher, the " Masking effect", that means the inhibition of the ability to distinguish a sound in the presence of a noise with characteristics of similar level and frequency.

THE DISTANCE FROM THE TEACHER


Often students sitting in the benches arranged in the middle and at the end of the classroom have a difficulty in understanding the speech compared to the students placed in the first benches. In many schools it is developed the tendency to group the students close to the chair, or by teachers more shrewd, to stroll during the lesson, in the midst of the benches in order to alleviate this discomfort.

The technical solutions to these inconveniences are not lacking. 2B Resine installs ceiling and wall sound absorbing panels, creates false ceilings ,wall coverings soundproofing, capable of attenuating suitably the reflection of the incident sound waves. It is a type of environmental acoustic correction that 2B Resine has spread and tested in its interventions.

HOW 2B RESINE CAN HELP YOU TO RESPECT THE PARAMETERS IMPOSED BY LAW?


Through acoustic correction: a rapid economic and low-impact operation that allows to reduce reverb in rooms until you get to the parameters allowed by law. 

HOW DOES 2B RESINE WORK?


1) 2B Resine technicians make acoustic measurements of school environments that need to be corrected acoustically to define reverb times;
2) preparing a dimensioning of the intervention and define the quantity of material necessary to obtain the acoustic correction in respect of legislation;
3) designing custom interventions with the installation of sound absorbing panels for the acoustic correction of school premises;
- The panels are customizable in format, color and in the reproduced image.
- The panels comply with all safety features required.
- the panels are acoustically performing even on small surfaces.
- Panels are quick to lay.

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