Real projects (Score 2, Informative)

One thing that is good with students is assigning real projects - have them pick a local community based NGO and build something for them - a CMS, or Blog (check sourceforge for software projects). The SQLClinic project is a management/tracking system for small psychiatric clinics but it or something like it could be useful to many small agencies and would serve as a model of what needs to be done at a larger level for larger agencies.