On December 3, St. Mary’s Primary School for Deaf Girls in Cabra, Dublin 7, officially opened its new Sound Perception Room, following months of intensive preparation.

Sound perception is a very important aspect of the education of deaf children and the principle of enabling a deaf child to make the maximum use of whatever hearing he or she has is fundamental to any educational programme for deaf children.

To do this, it is necessary to provide the child with high quality hearing aids and also to ensure that the amplification and quality of sound in the classroom environment is the best possible available.

To this end, the new Sound Perception Room in St Mary’s school has been specially designed to provide the best quality sound that technology can offer.

The state of the art facility was designed and installed by a team of employees from Analog Devices, specialists in designing circuits that play a fundamental role in converting and processing real life phenomena such as sound, light, motion, pressure and temperature into electrical signals to be used in a wide range of electrical equipment. They are best known for developing the circuits for the Nintendo Wii and airbags for cars.

Speaking at the opening of the sound Perception Room, Margaret Farrell, a teacher at St. Mary’s Primary School for Deaf Girls said:

“We are delighted to officially open our new sound perception room today to our students. Sound perception training focuses on training the deaf child to listen to sound and gain greatest benefit from the amplification.  This is done through the music programme. Performing on musical instruments, dancing and singing are fun ways of developing good listening skills.

”We are very grateful to all the employees at Analog Devices who have not only helped us put the room together but have also kindly sponsored us so that we could afford to build the best room possible for our children.”

Michael Kinsella, HR Business Partner, Analog Devices said:

“We are very proud to have partnered with Margaret and her team at St. Mary’s to develop this high tech room for their pupils. The new room has excellent amplification provided by the Soundfield system and all the audio-visual and musical equipment is linked to this to ensure a totally integrated high quality surround sound experience. 

”There is a suite of 6 electronic keyboards with headphones all interconnected with a mixing board so that the pupils can practice music independently and at the flick of a switch each performance can be heard through the speaker. This means that instead of separate practice rooms, the teacher can teach all the class together in the same room.

”The new computer is linked to the keyboards and the interactive whiteboard and allows for viewing of DVDs and educational programmes on the large screen. Various software programmes have been installed so that the pupils have access to their very own recording studio and a webcam allows performances to be videoed live in the room and played back on the whiteboard.

"I hope all of the students get as much out of using the room as we did developing it. We’re looking forward to hearing some of the girls’ compositions in the future!”