If your students have not gone through this process before, give them the following design brief to solve. It will help them understand the design process. Sponsor your students. All contestants must have a coach who is a teacher at one of the team members' schools. Each team should be composed of 2-4 students.
Coaches can sponsor more than one team.
Everyone should be involved in the brainstorming process, but after that, the students need to have assigned roles in the project. Remind the students that their project is important, that they are making progress, that creativity is discouraging at times, and that you think what they are doing is worthwhile. All inventions and innovations result from creative thinking and problem solving. One approach might be to identify a problem that a current technology does not solve. Then, imagine possible solutions.