I had a bowl of Fruit Loops for breakfast….ah wait I’m guessing you might not find that important. When I look at it, I personally feel that the line is drawn where you feel something is common knowledge/where there not much room for debate. If I’m doing something and I feel it is common knowledge then I would not be as likely to blog about it. But if I’m working on something that I’m struggling to understand or working through something in a way that I feel has not be covered before I would be likely to blog about it. One other thing to take into consideration is your audience. I think looking at who your audience is will help guide you.

As a mechanical engineering, I couldn’t agree with you more about having a real-world context and being hands on. There is a difference between being able to memorize equations and steps to solve a specific style problem and being able to solve any problem put in front of you. I think having well developed hands on projects is an important key in getting to the later. I feel that part of the issue with doing these projects throughout a students education comes down to the amount of time it takes to teach students the ‘nuts and bolts of engineering’ so that they can use it to solve problems.

Now to play Devil’s advocate on real-world projects in classes…
The issue with real-world problems is that they are always changing which makes it hard for professors to keep up with developing the curriculum, especially if they are performing research. A second issue is that sometimes these real-world problems require some specific knowledge and having students learn these details could distract from the rest of the material in the class.