When at all possible, involve a robot...
Two videos crossed my screen, via T, that represent what happens when students take their classroom experiences into their social world - though I suspect this isn't precisely what the academic community is looking for when they hold up that goal. Down at Duke, a student modded a refridgerator to install an elevator platform and beer can launching arm that can be aim at, say, one's sofa. Over at UC Berkeley, some mechanical engineers built a Beirut (Beer Pong) Robot that seems able to beat people, but also seems predicated on a pre-arranged table and cup layout. Both videos are pretty cool - though they don't give quite enough information to answer the question of whether they are really robots or just cool mechanical devices.