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Following last Wednesday’s successful Video Conference via the Glow portal I, along with others, had planned two more sessions. Last night saw the second session and tonight we will hold our third. The second session was really just to familiarise ourselves with the Marratech Forum. We also had visits from Marratech newbies, Susan Shepherd, Liz O’Neil and David Noble. Yesterday, we investigated the ‘Desktop Sharing’. This was easily done, but we found there was a time delay of around 3 seconds (the image being shared doesn’t reach the other participants immediately) Last night these images were also some what pixilated. During the first Video Conference, David Gilmour, Dave Rawson and I experimented a little with desktop sharing. The images were of a much better quality then (possibly something to do with the connection?)
Last night we were also able to experiment with the ‘Private’ communication. It is possible to send private text messages to a member of the session. It is also possible to talk to a member privately. If your private text box is open (as oppose to public) you will see that the icon for a microphone has change to a telephone handset. This means when you speak, only the person that you have privately selected will hear you (though everyone can still see your lips move!)

Our third session has been planned for tonight. Vicky Mackenzie at LTScotland has very kindly set up the privileges so that all mentors should be able to access the Marratech Video Conference via this link. Bob Hill, John Johnston, Neil Winton and I will give a series of short demonstrations/presentations that will highlight how Marratech can be used. We aim to start at around 8pm. If you are free please come in and join us. If you don’t have a webcam, you can still watch, and contribute via text.

If you can’t make it tonight, don’t worry. We are hoping to run a series of Video Conferences that will be open to all mentors throughout the ‘Phase 2’ trial of the portal. More to come on that later.