Back in 2011, HP India announced a novel idea called Lab-in-Box for education in rural and remote India. In partnership with India's National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Lab-in-Box is a self-sustainable computer lab inside a shipping container. The fourth such container will be deployed in Gujrat.
The biggest benefit is the container's portability. The containers can be easily transported using India's huge rail network and as visioned by HP, be dropped via helicopters. The shipping container or Lab-in-Box has:
- 15 HP terminals
- Printer
- Power
- WIreless connectivity
- Furniture
The focus is not just brining computers to remote parts of India but even on how information is delivered to students. The training and teaching content offered through these mobile labs comes from a central location through cloud magic. HP is using an adaptive platform called MindSpark developed by an HP partner. MindSpark's significance to the project is its ability to have personalized progress tracking capability. The lab being setup in Vidyanagar Primary School, Ahmedabad will follow the three previously setup at:
- Government Sarvodaya Senior Secondary School, New Delhi
- National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) campus, New Delhi
- Indian army at the Western Command, Chandigarh
HP and the NCERT deserve huge props for coming up with the project and continuing to push it forward. Here's a video showing what HP's Lab-in-Box is: