Ask HN: Does anyone have ideas for an independent study?

I've decided to take an independent study this semester, and I'm looking for something research worthy that I can conceivably build in a semester. The professor I've teamed up with focuses on pedagogy and reliable systems, so I'd prefer to do something in those areas.

I've previously tried to set up classes in the high school I graduated from to teach interested students how to program/build websites/etc., but it seems my old high school is uninterested in educating their students for free (go figure). I suppose with connections in the university, I could probably do this more easily, so I haven't ruled out trying to figure out how to get high school students interesting in CS. I have a particular draw to this because if it were not for a particularly good teacher in high school, I would've never discovered my passion for CS.

I'm a web developer by day, so doing something with the web is also of interest to me. One idea I had kicking around was to build an automatic failover to EC2 for sites not hosted on EC2.

If anyone has any other ideas or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it.