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October 29, 2006
Marratech in education
Peter found a small post today about Marratech in education. Read more about it here.
Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2006
LTU Marratech rooms
Yesterday was a revelation.
Peter Parnes showed us the Marratech enabled auditoriums and classrooms at the Lulea Technical University.
My jaw just dropped.
I do not know how to best describe it, other than to describe it via bullets.
- Every room has a raised floor for cables
- Every room is acoustically treated.
- Every table has a shielded, button enabled speaker microphone.
- A motion detector rail in the ceiling feels where the presenter is, making the camera follow the presenter automatically.
- A document camera, hidden in the ceiling, can be used to show documents.
- When a classroom attendee uses one of the table microphones, the main camera automatically focuses on the person talking.
- Every room has a computer dedicated for the teacher / presenter slide and document camera while the room has it's own computer for ensuring the video and audio from the room never gets interrupted.
- The first table in the class room has a plasma screen facing toward the teacher, so he / she do not need to turn around to view the material.
- 4 quiet projectors show the video from the network, the whiteboard, the document camera, etc... Controlled by the teacher.
- All is controlled from a profile based touch screen system. So a teacher's profile is kept and activated when he / she logs in.
- Power and network for all the attendees and the presenter built into the tables.
- 6 such rooms are now being used, ranging from a small room to large auditoriums. Projectors are swapped for very large plasma screens in the smaller rooms.
- All turned off or on by a button.
- All the rooms are controlled and assisted from a central control station where the Marratech client software is installed, the client computer sending all the video and audio from the classroom is controlled from there. (Long analog connections from the classroom to the computer)
- more more more...
In the 10 years I have worked with this stuff, I have seen many attempts at building such rooms, always OK, but never lived up to the possibilities of our software. It was always a set of compromises that left a lot to be desired. Less a question of effort and more a question of what was possible technically.
The setup being used beats the best VC enabled rooms to the ground. I have not been this surprised for a long time. The best part is, the system just worked. It was simple to use, it just worked.
I lift my hat very high to everyone (companies, individuals) involved in this. What an accomplishement!
I hope to be able to post pictures and a small video clip in the coming weeks and more details.
Ten years ago, I left Canada for the Lulea University because of how truly ahead this university was in terms of technology adoption, the quality of teaching and the absence of heavy tradition that impedes innovation. Yesterday, it confirmed to me that it still is the case.
Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 06:21 AM | Comments (2)
October 08, 2006
ATutor Learning Management System: Marratech Module
I have just been notified by Peter P. that ATutor now offers a plug in to our API, making it possible to add Marratech functionality to ATutor online class rooms. ATutor is an Open Source LMS Learning Management System.
I was informed of this project a while back through a reseller and it fell silent... so the silence for once meant a delivery :-)
The details are here. Thank you to the ATutor people for this module... always nice to see a Canadian effort link up to Marratech!
From the ATutor web page:
What is ATutor?
ATutor is an Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS) designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind. Administrators can install or update ATutor in minutes, develop custom templates to give ATutor a new look, and easily extend its functionality with feature modules. Educators can quickly assemble, package, and redistribute Web-based instructional content, easily retrieve and import prepackaged content, and conduct their courses online. Students learn in an adaptive learning environment.
Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 08:42 PM | Comments (2)
October 06, 2006
Big news: Marratech Glows in Scotland
Just wanted to get your attention towards a major Marratech deployment taking place. Marratech will be powering Scotland's Glow project (formerly SSDN). The Guardian, a major UK newspaper, reports on the project here, it gives a good background into the project.
Thanks to the Marratech Manager J2EE API and some specific H.323 video conferencing development work (E.164 and E.164 dial in), Marratech is now being deployed for e-learning across the Glow network, accessible to 800 000 students and teachers in 2008.
Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
UDP vs TCP revisited
This week's entries are a bit personal, as I am in the middle of a move with no broadband... blogging is about all the network I am using will let me do.
As I posted earlier, I am on a borrowed 128 kbps wifi link. The link only works when the window is open and drops 10 times a minute. It is getting cold in Stockholm!
I use instant messaging with our partners and my colleagues a lot. But on this wifi, MSN, AOL, iChat do not work. I tried Proteus, Addium, iChat AV, MSN Messenger. They drop and then kick me out for trying to log on to many times.
But with Marratech, I only have to click the "Info" link next to my room, unselect the video, audio, wb and web which leaves me with only chat.
I can now communicate with my colleagues via chat with no need of restarting the connection at all.
Why?
Since all of the Marratech media uses RTP over UDP (encrypted of course, so my neighbour can't read my messages) and UDP is a connectionless protocol, the Marratech chat has not gone down once.
This makes a huge difference when working from airports, hotel rooms or over 3G wireless where connections do go down and up all the time.
Feels like our stuff is built for the real world... (yes, I am seriously biased) Thank you Peter for explaining to me why our chat works.
More on UDP vs TCP can be read here.
PS. 24 mbps DSL is supposed to be up and running on the 11th DS.
Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2006
Marratech at Educause 2006, oct 9-12
Hi all,
EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.
Every major US university is a member and they attract a lot of attention from overseas as well. Their major event this year will be in Dallas, october 9th to 12th.
Of all the conferences (both enterprise and educational) that we attend, this is by far the best. The speakers, the attendees and the overall quality of the conference make it very worthwhile.
If you are in the market for a solution such as ours, we welcome you to attend and meet the vendors and try out all the software being demoed. It is the best way to make up your mind and get a hands on experience with Marratech, which we know you will like.
You will find us at booth 429.
Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)
Backlog
Hi all,
The blog took a little break during the past few days, and forum registrations are a bit slower. This is because of my moving to a house and having to wait for my new broadband supplier to deliver.
So, instead of asking my neighbour for a cup of sugar, I asked for his wifi password. Unfortunately (and fortunately come winter time) houses in Sweden are built like big Faraday cages, so the wifi I am getting is *really* slow.
Things should be back to normal in a couple of days!
Posted by Serge Lachapelle at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)