Every year some teachers from our schools travel to a far away place where we organize scientific courses and other educational activities for children in the nearby places.
Unfortunately, there is no Internet there and there is no way to find it in the vicinity. So, this year, we thought, that probably we could bring up a kind of a local network and put up a site there (we will still use w-fi to spread the network over the local buildings), so that students could be able to post their discoveries / blog posts / photos.
My questions are the following:
Now, what is important is that I am not against reading / self-studying, but I need to be pointed in the direction that will lead me to the desirable solution, not just "how to set up a secure / top-notch" network that will take me years to get the grip of.
Thank you!
You most definitely can run web servers without internet, and it should not even require any special configurations.
The harder part of your question is the out of the box forum / chat.
One solution that looks great is bbpress, a worpress forum. It even has a step-by-step guide to setting it up.
Unfortunately it does not have chat builtin, though this thread could help you.