PART A: The Wicked Problem - A Need or an Opportunity

1. What is the important educational need that you are seeking to address? This element is fundamental in this project. Since we have limited time, energy, and resources, cool technology without a clear sense of why it matters or what we gain by it is of little value in the educational setting.

In my pre-kindergarten and ½ day kindergarten classes, I have found it difficult to keep the students engaged while teaching them how to solve classroom conflicts. The students often don't have the attention span to listen to me verbally explain ways to deal with conflict resolution and they also don’t fully understand how to apply the techniques I am teaching into their own peer conflicts.

2. How you plan to address this educational issue with technology? You need to make a clear and convincing case that your proposed solution will make a real impact on the issue you identify, and that your proposed approach is a reasonable approach given its costs and possible alternatives.

I plan on videotaping children at this age, having a peer conflict and me talking them through different strategies to solve these conflicts. We will then review the video as a class and talk about the strategies that were used and what worked well to solve the problem. The students might even want to practice these strategies with a partner after they have seen how the children in the video used the techniques.
This approach will be very easy to implement because I can use our school’s Flip Camera to tape my students. Flip Cameras are very inexpensive and easy to use.

3. Logistics of solution: For example…

1. What is the scope? (e.g., when and where will tool be used and for how long? Who all will use it?)

I will use this tool at the beginning of the school year to set the tone for a safe and comfortable classroom environment. The sooner you teach young children how to resolve peer conflicts on their own, the better off you are for an enjoyable school year.
After showing the videos to the students once, I will see how they are doing with implementing the strategies on their own. If many of them seem to still have trouble using the skills taught in the video, I might have to show it again and readdress the topic again.
My students will use the videos and I will offer them to other colleagues to use in their own classrooms.

4. Relevant research and resources (from the Internet and elsewhere) including reports on the closest effort you can find to what you are planning to do as well as ideas and materials you may be able to build upon in your own effort. Your description should include:

1. The results of your search (What resources may help guide your project? What resources may help in the implementation of your project?)
2. What you learned from performing this search. For example, which search engines did you use? What strategies did you use? What helped or hindered your search? How would you search again next time?

Many of the kindergarten teachers in my district use a discipline program called Conscious Discipline. When I taught kindergarten for the first time last year, I was given a brief introduction to the program. It seemed to work really well, but I would like to learn more about it so I can implement it into my classroom in more depth next year. In order to do this, I researched many sources related to Conscious Discipline, such as:
1.The Couscious Discipline Website: http://consciousdiscipline.com/
2. You Tube videos made by the developer of the program: http://youtu.be/8j3gF1dh_t4, http://youtu.be/9jfTlduYkRk
3. Conscious Discipline Implementation Plan for PreK - 2nd Grade: http://consciousdiscipline.com/downloads/resources/preK-2nd_grade_implementation_handout_FINAL.pdf
4. A Power Point that teaches you about the different children’s books that are used in this program: http://consciousdiscipline.com/downloads/resources/Shubert%20Activity%20PowerPoint.pdf
5. The textbook: Conscious Discipline by Dr. Becky A. Bailey

5. A plan for the portion you will implement during this course and the portion you will implement after this course completes.

Before school starts, I will use the Conscious Discipline Implementation Plan to prepare the classroom routines and rules that will be expected in my classroom. I will also make a list of conflict scenarios that I want to use for these videos. I have a few students who I am tutoring this summer and I might be able to get them to help me with the videotaping so I can have that part done before school starts.
Once the school year starts, I will show the videos to my class and use them as a teaching tool. I might even continue the videotaping throughout the school year by taping student conflicts and their resolutions as they are happening. That way I can continue to show them to the class and revisit the topic as the year progresses.

6. How would you know you were successful?

If I saw my students applying these strategies into their daily routine to solve their own peer conflicts, I would know that I was successful in teaching them