As part of the latest course, i wanted to show how to get in and see what was in the cache of SharePoint. I also wanted to add my own items via web parts. Since the DCS is really AppFabric, and I have worked with it before, I didn't see it being a tough set of labs to put together. However, I found that all the SPDistributedCache classes are marked as "internal". This leave the regular .NET API to make calls into the service layers. I found a great little set of code written by Stephane Eyskens (@stephaneeyskens) here:
http://www.silver-it.com/node/111
That is one of the better pieces of sleuthing I have seen in a while!
Chris