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Music & Media in Education A C C E N T ESDPITEICOINAL
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Music Education Network - PO Box 1013 Blackwood SA 5051 Ph 1300 723 700 Fax 08 8270 1366 February 2010

MySchool K-Array KR100s
stirs up an speaker system
opportunity
for leaders.

Dear Educator,

Nothing like some excitement to start off
the new school year. Regardless of all the
controversy I’d be surprised if anyone actively
involved in education hasn’t at least had
a “peek” at the federal government’s new
myschool.edu.au website... and not only at their
own school’s statistics.

I must say that I do share concerns about
the distortions caused by focusing only on
literacy and numeracy tests... and the complex
and questionable “similar schools” statistical
comparisons. Not to mention the vast range
of other factors that can affect results... such
as selective enrolments, overseas students,
disability programs, class sizes and so on.

But on the bright side, it has certainly stimulated Immanuel College Adelaide...
a lot of discussion amongst the educational Latest audio technology for the Chapel
fraternity at every level... across the country,
systems and faculties. Maybe part of the plan??

So what does it all mean to music and the When Music EDnet was asked to vocals. For the Immanuel chapel this meant
arts... or for that matter, the role of creativity in put together a proposal for a new we would be placing considerable emphasis
education? I suspect that teachers will simply get sound reinforcement system for on the choice and placement of speakers
on with job at hand and that increased attention
on education will have a positive affect. The the Immanuel College chapel late last year to minimise reverberation and disperse the
vast majority of educational leaders will
continue to take a holistic approach to education. the brief was simple... sound, ideally, only to the audience and very
“Working the system” around NAPLAN, in
my mind, should mean aggressively targeting “...high quality sound for speech and live little elsewhere.
the help promised from the federal government
rather than pushing other subjects down the music covering the entire audience, including Adding to our design criteria was the desire to
priority list.
under and on the balcony.” ensure that the speaker system was aestheti-

Of course achieving a high quality result in a cally in harmony with the chapel... and, if
highly reverberant environment is anything possible, be virtually invisible.

And this should be a good thing for music and but simple. And the wide range of uses for the Introducing the hi-tech K-Array...
the arts... remember all that research that is now chapel... including services, assemblies and superb speaker system technology
well documented. In NSW in the 70’s a ten musical performances... dictates a significant
year research program showed convincingly
that students who were given classroom and number of simultaneous input channels and The new K-Array systems only arrived in
instrumental music lessons in years K-7
performed 11-20% better in every subject... adequate foldback for performers. All this to Australia in mid 2009, but have established
including those targeted in the NAPLAN tests.
be achieved in a large octagonal area with quite a reputation around the world for high

brick, concrete and glass wall surfaces and a performance, highly controlled sound. Major

15m high ceiling! auditoria, TV studios and houses of worship

The hidden agenda behind MySchool may Defining high quality sound and have been high on the impressive list of
in fact have more to do with the national the performance requirements installations of K-Array speaker systems.
curriculum. And with the Arts now well down
that track I think we have some exciting Having evaluated the K-Array systems soon
opportunities to bring creativity to the fore.
The design criteria we used was based on after they arrived it was clear that the main

ensuring clear articulation (of consonants) for system for Immanuel should be the KR100s...

Enjoy. speech and a smooth wide frequency range a 1500W bi-amped system consisting of two

Keith Huxtable for music... and deliver this evenly over the DSP controlled bi-amps and 12” sub woofers
Managing Director
keith@musicednet.com Music EDnet entire audience. Sound levels should also and two incredibly efficient line arrays. Each
is here
be as even as possible for every seat and line array measures 1 m high, but only 5.5

with sufficient headroom to complement cm wide and 7 cm deep... almost invisible.

the dynamics of live instruments and KR100 Line Array ...continued on page 2