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How To Use UCSC Classroom Microphones

  1. Unlock lectern or media cabinet and open the accessories drawer. In lecture halls this is the right hand drawer. In other rooms the drawer has either a pull-lip at its top or a latch in the middle that you push down.
  2. Take two batteries out of the charger from slots that say "Full". If none are full, take the two that have the highest number by them.
  3. On the microphone (mic)'s body pack, press the two buttons on the sides and pull the door forward.
  4. Put the batteries in with their flat sides facing the springs then shut the door.
  5. Push the switch on the top of the body pack to "on". The light next to it should turn green.
  6. Clip the mic onto your clothing as close to your mouth as possible.
  7. Hold the clip with one hand and turn the mic so that the flat top side of its windscreen faces your mouth. If it faces in any other direction the volume may be too low to be usable.
  8. Turn up the volume. On touchpanel media control systems, the volume is at the top of the touchpanel labelled "Speech Volume". Rooms with pushbutton media systems will have a rotary volume knob. Ask the students in the back row if they can hear you, you may not be able to hear it yourself because the speakers are over the student seats.
  9. On touchpanel systems, pressing the "Mute" button by the volume control will turn off sound to the speakers and to the recording and captioning systems. If you want to continue to send audio to those systems but not to the speakers, turn the volume all the way down but do not press the mute button.

Troubleshooting

If you do not hear any audio from the microphone, follow these steps:

  1. Check that the power light on the top of the mic's body pack is green. If not, replace the batteries with another pair from the charger. Make sure that the flat ends of the batteries are facing the springs.
  2. Turn the speech volume control all the way up. Make sure that the mute button is not selected. On most systems it will be red when selected, black when it is not.
  3. Because the speakers are over the student seats, you might not be able to hear them from the instructor's station. Walk out into the student area and speak into the mic.
  4. Gently tap the top of the microphone. You should hear that sound through the speakers.
  5. If these steps do not solve the problem, please call Learning Technologies at the number listed on the media cabinet or submit a trouble ticket at http://its.ucsc.edu and select the General Assignment Classroom category. Learning Technologies can usually fix this or other media system problems in just a few minutes so your class can continue.