Within a simple old shipping container on a truck, with a few modifications, you can have a roaming teleclassroom.
A shipping container is a good platform for such a system, this is since it has these advantages.
For power, you can have solar panels on top of the container.
For electronics, you can have it hidden behind the other end of the container.
For screen, one end of the room, can be darkened if using projector style display. Alternatively you could just use a standard LCD screen.
However for making teleconferencing more natural, have the projector be situated behind a screen, and the camera in the front, so you can see people overlapping the screen. in human sized form.
Acoustics of the room is more standardized, making it cheaper and faster to build such classrooms, without worrying about customizing the system for the room. (same principle apply to display as well)
Business model, could be helping local businesses to contact each other via teleconferencing, after teaching the local school children.
Infrastructure in the container, could go beyond just teaching. It can also have a miniature printing press to print out useful information for local people. (e.g. advertising, growing crops tips, health advice etc...). Recommend using thermal printer for reliability though.-- mofosyne, Nov 01 2011 If its 'tele' then why does it need to be roaming?!-- sqeaketh the wheel, Nov 02 2011 I assume you take the TeleClassroom to where there are isolated prospective students; the teacher is elsewhere, for example in a city. Hence the need for tele- and roaming.
My dad did this for a while. He said it was great - all the benefits of being a teacher without annoying kids everywhere!-- spidermother, Nov 02 2011 I don't think teachers should be too worried about annoying kids everywhere. If the kids learn, who cares if they're annoyed?-- swimswim, Nov 02 2011 A school on a train would be fun too-- hippo, Nov 02 2011 The place my Grandparents lived was so remote that their kids and the kids of the only other family there were taught elementary school from a train car.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 02 2011 That's quite cool - although I really meant a moving train.-- hippo, Nov 02 2011 Ah, of course.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 02 2011 Hippo, baked: see home-schooled hobos.-- swimswim, Nov 02 2011 This looks like one of those 'such a good idea it's actually baked' incidents. Education for the masses, in mass production. Nice.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 02 2011 The application is nomad peoples ? and they only "go to school" one day a month, so the shipping container is moved around the country by helicopter to service the different tribes ? whose path is tracked and predicted by satellites ?
[-]-- FlyingToaster, Nov 03 2011 [Flying Toaster], are you hinting at William Gibson's "Spook Country" ?-- normzone, Nov 03 2011 "Spook Country" is the one where a gigadollar of dirty laundered money was bouncing around the world in a shipping container with nowhere to call home (and tracked by satellites). Pretty boring actually, compared to Gibson's Bridge Trilogy and the Idoru stories.-- sqeaketh the wheel, Nov 03 2011 I'm just trying to figure out the circumstances under which a shipping container would be the best solution for a classroom.
If the population has a fixed locale then a building of indigenous materials would be best and least expensive. So it has to be nomadic.
But a shipping container isn't something you drag around with a couple donkeys. You need a semi (which means roads) or a copter or a nearby airfield.
re: Gibson, I started to read it and got bogged down with something else. Thanks for reminding me.-- FlyingToaster, Nov 03 2011 random, halfbakery