Marratech E-Meetings Portal
The Apple University Consortium is trialing the use of on-line collaborative software to assist Universities in exploring the uses of such technology for teaching, learning and research. Marratech is a Swedish company which has provided the AUC with a trial of their server and client software.
The AUC is making available to AUC members and others in the Education community a copy of the client software as well as access to the server for hosting meetings and presentations. Use is restricted to exploration and evaluation purposes only. The AUC strongly encourages those Universities interested in using the technology long-term to contact Marratech and enquire about purchasing a license for their own local server.
What are E-Meetings?
The Marratech Work Environment helps groups of people to communicate, collaborate and manage information from their computers. It gives users a secure environment where members can talk with high voice quality, share information, pictures, MS Office documents and see each other.
Some Usage Scenarios
E-MEETINGSManagement meetings, status report meetings and sales meetings are daily activities for every professional today. With it's ability to reach colleagues from across the city, country or globe, the Marratech Work Environment offers the perfect place to hold your next meeting.
TEACHING & LEARNINGDistribute your classroom over the Internet by having students join via your electronic classroom. Before the class begins, import your slides from MS PowerPoint and other material in the classroom's electronic whiteboard. When the class begins, all the students will have the material pre-loaded into their Marratech Pro clients; changing slides will take a fraction of a second.
This environment makes for truly interactive e-learning, where distributed students can ask questions using high quality voice and use the whiteboard to solve problems.
Recording of voice, whiteboard, chat, slides and video will also help students review the lecture afterwards, a very popular functionality before final exams!
Setup & Downloads
To use the Marratech Portal you will need 4 items:
- Marratech Client Software
- Firewire or USB camera
- USB Noise Cancelling Headset or Headphones & Microphone
- Internet Connection (Broadband, 128kbps minimum)
System RequirementsFirst of all you need to make sure that your computer fulfills the system requirements for running Marratech Pro:
| PC Windows
| Mac OS X
| Linux |
Processor
| Pentium II 300+ MHz | G4, G5 or Intel | Pentium II 300+ MHz |
| Min RAM | 256MB | 256MB | 256MB
|
Display
| Min 1024x768
Video card supporting Direct X
| Min 1024x768 | Min 1024x678 |
Operating System
| Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98,
ME, 2000 or Windows XP | Mac OS X OS 10.3 or later
QuickTime 6.3 or later
Java 1.4.1 or later | Redhat 7.1 or later |
Marratech Client Download
Download the software for your computer and double click on the file to either start the installtion or mount the disk image. Once installed you can start the application by double clicking on the Marratech icon.
AUC Server Settings
The settings you need to connect to the AUC Server using the Marratech Pro Client are:
http://www.auc.edu.au:8080
You will also need a logon and password as the server requires users to authenticate before they can join any of the meetings rooms. You can obtain a trial logon and password from your local AUC Representative.
Firewall's & Connection Problems
The vast majority of problems associated with connecting to the Marratech Portal are due to local firewall issues. The following ports must be opened in your firewall to be able to communicate with the Marratech portal:
TCP ports: 80 (for http) and 443 (for https)
UDP ports: 52000 to 52999
Please Note! The ports should be opened in “allow-return” mode.
If you are still having problems you might want to download the following PDF outlining how to configure your firewall to support the Marratech portal and forward it to your Network Administrator.
Marratech_Firewall_Settings.pdf
