Three things Excel is good for as an educator is making charts, recording data, and calculations. It can be utilized for keeping track of grades, comparing data as well as keeping numerous amounts of data in one area. It can be advantageous for math and organization. 

Two projects ideas could be to create a chart organizing expenses and budgets, this is something that students could use in the future by knowing how to keep track of their finances and savings. Another would be to have students learn how to make a chart organizing a mock business in an economy class. They could organize things like inventory, expense, profit, etc. 

One useful learning objective for a project that includes excel for students would have to be to use it to organize large amounts of data into one spreadsheet. This can be very beneficial for projects that have so much numerical data and need to be sorted or converted into graphs and pie charts for visuals. 

What I have here is a mock chart listing auto sales and averaging sales.