In today's fast-growing, highly competitive global marketplace, innovative thinking is more important than ever. Encourage your students' creativity, imagination, and problem-solving skills with these technological design activities. Technology involves using science to solve problems or meet needs, and the understanding of technology can be developed by challenging students to design a solution to solve a problem or invent something to meet a need. Inventions don't have to be entirely new ideas. Sometimes they can be improvements to existing inventions. In this month's column, students in grades k-3 improve inventions, while grades 4-6 tackle design challenges. A corresponding activity is included.