Amplifiers For Education | LEA Install At Brooklyn Law School
The Brooklyn Law School in New York is one of the country’s most highly-regarded schools for law. Their faculty and programs have been helping to innovate several fields of law for over a century. But in the face of a global pandemic, they have been forced to innovate their classrooms and teaching styles further to continue to provide their students with the learning experience that they known for.
Let’s dive in and take a closer look at this LEA install…
The Spec
Amplifiers For Education | LEA Install At Brooklyn Law School
Venue: Brooklyn Law School, NY
Install Purpose: A new hybrid learning environment was needed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to allow half-capacity student learning.
Product Used: CONNECTSERIES
The Venue
Amplifiers For Education | LEA Install At Brooklyn Law School
Brooklyn Law School in New York was established in 1901 and has since received international acclaim in several fields of law. Their clinical programs are nationally renowned as one of the countries best professional skills programs for law students.
With the onset of COVID and national stay-at-home and capacity orders, they were prompted to find new ways to engage their students without putting them in harm’s way. This led them down the path of an AV system upgrade in their debate classrooms to enable a hybrid learning environment that would be both effective for student learning and easy for staff operation.
The Integrator
Amplifiers For Education | LEA Install At Brooklyn Law School
Shadowbox Design Management, headquartered in Hicksville, New York, is a full-service AV systems integration and event production company providing systems integration, production design and live event production services to clients.
Company Vice President Joseph Ondrek explains that the classroom had an existing AV system based on lavalier microphones, but mics were often misplaced, or they would forget to turn them on. There were too many things to go wrong, and instruction time was wasted with troubleshooting. In addition to the distance learning capabilities, the school wanted a solution that would allow the professor to walk in, start the Zoom meeting, and then get right to the instruction.
We recently got the chance to talk with Joseph Ondrek about some of their install stories, motivations, and just geek out a little bit about audio gear. It was a blast!
The Install
Amplifiers For Education | LEA Install At Brooklyn Law School
To achieve a safe level of social distancing, the school decided to shift to a hybrid attendance model with only half the students in the classrooms at any one time. In order to facilitate this model, the faculty needed the seminar-based classrooms to be equipped with an AV approach that would allow remote students to hear and interact as efficiently as possible and keep all students engaged.
“They didn’t want the instructors to have to worry about any equipment problems; they needed a system that’s simple to operate with complete, high-quality coverage that just worked,” says Ondrek. “These were issues they wanted to correct before the pandemic, but the distance-learning requirements brought home the need for a new approach to their AV system and a significant technology upgrade.”
The Shadowbox team did all the concept, design, and installation work for the project. The install began with upgrading two primary lecture-style classrooms with multiple Sennheiser TeamConnect in-ceiling microphones in each room to cover the roughly 900 square feet per space. For output, they installed a set of 10 in-ceiling loudspeakers in each classroom, powered by amplifiers from yours truly. 😎
“The audio is integrated with a QSC Q-SYS Ecosystem linked to a PC running Zoom so that remote students could hear and interact with the students and teacher in the class seamlessly,” Ondrek explains. “We used one QSC Core to manage both rooms, utilizing the Dante connections to route audio to the second room using the school’s existing LAN.”
The audio system is designed to deliver quality audio through Zoom to the remote students, providing voice lift across the classroom from the teacher to the students. Ondrek notes that the goal for all students in the classrooms — those on the extreme left and right sides of the rooms and far in the back — can hear clearly, be heard clearly, and interact optimally.
“The LEA amplifiers gave us the channel count we needed to distribute audio throughout the different arrays and groups that we needed to divide up the speakers in the room,” he adds. “They have two rooms running off of one QSC core, the first room has analog connections happening right out of the core, but the second room’s audio connections are made through Dante, so we’re able to leverage the school’s IT network to take the Dante from one classroom to the other instead of having to run extra cables.”
Ondrek adds that this was a full AV upgrade, including the audio system integrated with the projection system. Now the teachers can walk into the classroom, engage the touch screen, and the system starts up, freeing the instructor to focus on the lesson at hand.
“The professors don’t have to worry about the mics, speakers, amps, or any system components being on or anything like that; it’s a high-quality, functional, and easy-to-use system,” he says. “We designed the system to be as intuitive as possible. The instructors go through a brief system orientation, and within about 15 minutes, they are comfortable and up and running without any issues or concerns.”
The Conclusion
Amplifiers For Education | LEA Install At Brooklyn Law School
The school is currently considering AV upgrades for other classroom spaces on the campus, depending on how long the pandemic may require the hybrid attendance model.
“The school is happy, and I’m happy with LEA,” Ondrek concludes. “The amps are great, and LEA tech support has been phenomenal. Every time I’ve emailed, I’ve received a response back within an hour, and anytime I call, I connect with people who are more than happy to walk me through the entire process. We will be working with LEA Professional on future projects for sure.”
We’d like to thank Shadowbox for giving our CONNECTSERIES a chance in this project and we hope that staff and students at the Brooklyn Law School will continue to benefit from this system for many years to come.
If you have any questions or feedback about using amplifiers for education in install projects like this or any other projects, feel free to fill out the form below or reach out to us on our social media channels.
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