Using inter-vehicle wireless networking and application sharing, a "mobile classroom", can provide a rich, collaborative teaching and discussion environment; utilizing what otherwise would be part of the educational down-time during extended periods of travel. For example, an instructor could give a short PowerPoint lecture or share a real-time video feed to help orient students to a geologic feature they are discussing.
There is a wealth of supplemental materials that are often provided to a student on a field trip: field guides, papers, figures, maps, etc. By also providing this material to students in an electronic format on their GeoPad, the field-trip experience can be enhanced in a number of ways including:
- Search capabilities can help students locate relevant information quickly when provided with a broad collection of reference materials; organizing access to information into a table of contents or index is also important in helping students navigate the materials.
- Using the screen-clipping capabilities of OneNote, a student can easily interact with, annotate, and organize this supplemental information in their own learning context.