Connecticut School Shooting Tragedy

I feel the need to write, both to process the tragedy and share my thoughts.

My Life and History:
This school shooting has had a profound affect on me. I was a senior in high school for the Columbine shooting. I was just married for the Virginia Tech shooting. I now have a 2 year old daughter and another one on the way. My views of the world have completely changed since my daughter was born. As a senior in high school, I didn't really understand the Columbine Shooting. It happened in a far away place to people I didn't know. I did not truly understand what a tragedy it was or even what real grief was.  I was much older for the Virginia Tech shooting. I had been out of college for several years, but was still in my 20's and could associate with college life. I understood that it was a very bad event and that people lost brothers and sisters. I could visualize the event and put myself in their place. I could see myself sitting in a classroom, listening to a lecture, when all hell broke loose. But, again, it happened far away from me and to people I didn't know. The Connecticut shooting happened at an elementary school. All the victims were educators or children aged 6-7 yrs old. I am an educator and my daughter is 2. This hits too close to home. If you have children, you know the unconditional love a parent has for a child. You also know that you would do anything to protect your child. I feel a responsibility to protect my daughter and the lives of the children I teach. Their parents trust that I will care for their children, as I will trust my daughter's teacher to protect her while she is at school. I cannot imagine the amount of grief the parents' of these victims feel. I saddens my heart to just contemplate losing my daughter. I worry when she gets too quiet at home. I do not know what I would do if she was permanently silent. What would I do if I couldn't see her face in the morning? Or hear her say I love you? How would I plan a funeral? How would I continue on? A parent should not have to bury a child and I would gladly trade my life to save my daughter.

Mental Health:
Information is still coming about the shooter, but it appears that he had a mental illness of some sort. There are many articles discussing mental health issues and the social stigma associated with it. There is a general lack of understanding or support for families dealing with mental illness. We need to have a serious discussion about mental illness and help families get the resources they desperately need. Through family and friends, I have my own experiences with mental illness. My family is not a stranger to it. But, we still shy from the topic and hide from ourselves, even though we know things are not right. I pray that my daughter will be able to talk to us instead of hide from us. I will stay ever vigilant looking for the signs of problems. I will discuss mental health with her and teach her to not be afraid to seek help. If you are sick with virus, you seek a doctor. If you need financial advice, you seek a banker. If you car is broken, you seek a mechanic. Why then do we not seek help if our mind is not right?

Guns:
All major shootings naturally bring up discussions about guns and gun control. However, gun control is an issue that should be discussed by rational people making rational decisions. Not by grieving families reacting to a tragedy, or politicians looking to leverage that same tragedy for their own ends. The truth that many people do not want to accept is that we will simply not be able to get rid of all guns in this country. Let me repeat my point:

Regardless of your beliefs, legislating a ban on guns will not eliminate gun violence.

A determined attacker will acquire whatever weapons they deem necessary to commit evil. The attackers in Columbine planned for months and obtained guns and explosives illegally  Convicted felons buy illegal guns every day. You will not be able to legislate the elimination of every gun in this country. We have thousands of miles of unprotected boarders on every side of this country. Criminals would continue to smuggle in illegal guns to commit illegal acts.

School Safety:
Like Mental Health issues, we need to have serious discussion about how to really make schools safe. Does our "duck and cover" drill really make us safe? Does our one Police Officer make us safe? Should we look at Israel or Mexico as example? Both of these countries surround their schools with high, razor-wire fences and armed guards. Do we follow the lead of school districts like Harrold ISD in Harrold, TX? There, teachers that have a TX Concealed Handgun License, can be approved to carry on campus. There is currently a huge push to combat bullying in school. This could have helped prevent the violence experienced in Columbine, but would not have prevented the Connecticut shooting.

Answers:
I don't know the answer. I believe it will be a combination of many things. What I do know, is that I am terrified for the future of my daughter and the future of all children. We cannot simply point fingers and try to blame one aspect, while turning a blind eye to all the other contributing factors. I will do everything in my power to protect my classroom of children when I am with them. And I will continue to protect my family when I am with them.

May God have mercy on the souls of children. I thank every educator for protecting the children entrusted to them. Someday you will have my daughter in your class, as I might have your son in mine.

Course Reflection - EDLD 5364 - Teaching with Technology

Course EDLD 5364, Teaching with Technology, centered on a single group project. Each week encompassed different readings, videos, and tasks that added to the group project. After going through this course, I realize the main goal was to get us to understand that we should not consider technology to be an add-on to our lessons, but should be an integral part of the lesson design.

Throughout the class, we focused on incorporating technology, mainly Web 2.0 technology, into a format of lesson plans called Universal Design for Learning, UDL. In the first week we formed a group and started collaborating using a shared Google Doc. Luckily, I was able to team up with members from the previous course, with the addition of one new member. Since, we knew each other, things started to roll easily. One of our first tasks was to research and create individual UDL lessons. This was a new concept for me and I have learned a great deal from the UDL lesson planning process.

"Universal Design for Learning is an extension of an architectural movement called universal design" (Rose & Meyer, 2002). Universal design is the concept that every building and structure should be accessible to every person, regardless of abilities or impairments. Some examples of universal design are the curb cutouts that allow people in wheel chairs to access sidewalks and the fact that Braille placards are placed at the same height in every building to allow visually impaired people to easily locate what they need. UDL bring this concept to the education realm and opened my eyes to how restrictive our current system is. The lessons in my class are based on the assumption that every student has full vision and hearing and that every student's brain functions pretty much the same. What I have realized after this group project is that I may be missing many of my students especially those with impairments that are not external and easily seen. I have learned that I should start my lesson plans with the end in mind. I should set my learning objectives first and then design activities that meet these objectives. I should also incorporate different levels and types of activities to allow my students the freedom to learn the material on their terms. Most of the activities use technology and Web 2.0 resources, but they should also include paper-based products and traditional textbook and library resources. This is the first concrete reason I have learned of to validate the use of technology in the classroom. I have always understood that technology opens the door to the outer world, but now I understand that without technology, many of my students are shut out of their full potential. I can also concretely explain to others why they should start to incorporate technology into their lessons. I can explain that "technology is simply a tool that assists [our] ongoing assessment of the students’ progress and supports in [our] efforts to make learning interesting, engaging, and meaningful to the students." (Sprague & Dede, 1999, pg. 16).

In college, I finally realized that I learn best when I have examples to work from. I can read a textbook and figure things out, but I have always been drawn to math and science, because the math and science textbooks are full of worked examples. When working a problem, I typically find a similar problem in the book and follow the pattern. This is also how I approached this course. I worked best on the UDL Lesson Builder assignment because I could reference the example lessons on the CASTwebsite. But, I also realize that this is a shortcoming of mine. I struggle when I have to create a new product and there is not an example to work from. This makes it difficult for me when I progress past the examples and need to extend them to new products. However, I am having better successes with this and am becoming more familiar with creating entirely new ideas as I become a more seasoned practitioner, and eventually expert, in the field of educational technology. These group assignments are also helping me in this realm. We are able to work together to create new ideas and I am able to receive instant feedback from my group members on everything. I have seen great improvements in my teammates and my work. It's this type of instant feedback that was discussed in a video from the course. Mr. James Gee explored the relationship of video games and assessment (Edutopia.org, nd). In a video game, you learn and try new tasks and get instant feedback on the results. If the results are positive you move on, if they are negative, you try again. This concept is reflected in these group assignments. When we find something that works, we share it with each other and we all learn from it. When we find a fault, again we share it with each other and we all learn from it. I am beginning to incorporate this concept in my classroom. I have been giving my students shorter assessments that are quicker and easier to grade, so that I can share their results sooner. I also have the students share their results with the class and we collaborate on why certain questions were missed and what we can do to improve for the next time.

The ideas covered in this course have caused a shift in my thinking as I design my classroom lessons. The collaboration in the course has caused a shift in my thinking as I collaborate with my peers on my campus. Google Docs are a great way to share ideas and create a product together. I have also noticed some short comings in the design process when it comes to the Google Docs. We created a new document for each week of the course and copied a bunch of stuff to each new document. There was also a bunch of information in each document that did not necessarily pertain to the assignment at hand. I found it difficult to wade through everything in the document and find out what was new and needed to be done. In the future, I may need to find a better way to arrange the shared document to make it easier to understand and use. There may be some better software to use, or we may just need to setup some guidelines on the use of the document. One of the main issues we encountered was due to scheduling and procrastination. There were several of us, me included, that would wait until Sunday to start working on the weekly assignments. In the future, we should setup some time lines and goals so that we are not "cramming" at the end.



References:

Rose, D. H., Meyer, A. M., & , F. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age, universal design for learning. Alexandria, VA: Assn for Supervision & Curriculum. Retrieved fromhttp://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/chapter4_2.cfm

Sprague, D., & Dede, C. (1999). If i teach this way, am i doing my job: Constructivism in the classroom. Retrieved from http://imet.csus.edu/imet9/280/docs/dede_constructivisim.pdf

Edutopia.org (nd). Big thinkers: James Paul Gee on grading with games. Retrieved on April 1, 2012 from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-james-gee-video

Wk 5 Reflection - Assessments

Assessments and tests were the focus of this week's information.  The Web 2.0 chapter brings up a problem I see in my class. There is a disconnect between the way we are expected to teach and the way we are expected to test, especially for state testing. The book put it this way, "if you are integrating new tools, you do not want to assess these outcomes with old models" (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p. 170). That quote is taken slightly out of context. The authors meant it more that we should create lessons and assessments together so that they align better. But it also illustrates the problem with current high-stakes, state testing.  Currently, teachers do not create the state test, nor do we have much, if any, input on it. This makes it very difficult to align everything. It also highlights the fact that the state testing is becoming more and more unreliable as an indicator of student performance. What it does really indicate is that our students do not do well on high stakes tests. It says nothing about their ability to collaborate and problem solve in a group setting, which is how most classrooms are structured now. It says nothing about their ability to find the information they need when it is needed. Many of my students learned another language before they learned English and struggle with definitions and vocabulary. What I am finding in my class is that these students understand the math concepts I teach, but get hung up on random vocabulary words in the test. They are more than willing to look up these words, but the State has determined that they should not be allowed to use a dictionary on the math test. So, does the student's score reflect their math ability?  Or, does it really reflect their vocabulary and language ability? We all need to work together to revamp the entire testing system to reflect the changes being made in the classroom and education system.

Mr. James Gee had some great suggestions on where we might look to find inspiration for changing the way we assess our students.  "If you think about, video games are one big assessment" (Edutopia.org, nd).  And he is right.  The entire point of any video game is to learn the game, then beat the game, or in educational terms, show that you have mastered the game.  This is exactly what we want out students to do in school.  Learn the material, then show us you mastered the material.  It sounds like schools and video games are basically the same thing structure-wise, which in some respects they are, but there are some major differences in delivery and timeliness.  In video games you learn by doing.  You control the widget on screen and figure out what it does.  In a video game you get instant feedback.  When you control that widget, did you progress or did you die.  In a video game, when you fail, you try again until you get it right.  Your life starts over and you go back and try another widget and you keep doing this until you mastered the game.  Often times, school is lacking in these basic componenets.  In school, students often learn by reading a textbook, then are tested over facts.  They receive their scores after a week or so and do not typically get a second chance.  If I were to describe how schools run now, most people are ok with that.  They will understand this system because that is what we have all grown up with.  But in light of the explanation of video games, doesn't the current system of education seem outdated, slow, and even wrong?

References:
Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0, new tools, new schools. Intl Society for Technology in educ.

Edutopia.org (nd). Big thinkers: James Paul Gee on grading with games. Retrieved on April 1, 2012 from
http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-james-gee-video

Wk 4 Reflection

The readings for this week revolved around student assessment.  I read through Ch 7 of the CAST book Teaching Every Student and it explained that, as we differentiate our instruction to meet the various needs of the students, we also need to differentiate our assessment strategies.  We often give tests in a single format, that may be a hindrance to some students.  For example, a paper-based test may not be the best option for a student with vision impairment.  The student may know everything being asked, but if (s)he has difficulty reading the material, the test score may not truly reflect what (s)he knows.  The material given in an auditory format may better suit this student.  So, we should set learning objectives and goals for our instruction and our assessment.  This will allow the students the flexibility to best learn and best show us what they have learned.

Also, what I see in many of my students is an inability to overcome test anxiety.  Many of my students perform particularly low on the high-stakes State Tests, even though they have performed at very high levels in my class.  When I talk to them, they tell me they were worried and confused and just could not get going on the test.  Well, their score does not accurately show their knowledge.

This brings up another point, that was not addressed in the readings, but is something to think about.  I believe that we are doing a much better job at designing classroom instruction.  Many schools focus on Project-Based Learning (PBL), small group activities, and technology initiatives to better allow for collaboration and general creativity.  But there is a disconnect when it come to our classroom instruction and the State testing.  For testing days, the students enter a sterile room (we are required to remove or cover everything in our rooms) and are required to work independently and silently on a paper-based test for 4+ hours.  Then the school district, school, teacher and student are all graded based on that one, out-of-context test.  Is that really how we should "test" our kids?

References:

Rose, D. H., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching in the digital age: universal design for learning. Retrieved from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/ 

DI Staff Dev Reflection

After school on Tuesday I led a "Staff Development" over the Instant Challenge portion of Destination Imagination. It started off a little rocky, but I think it went well.

We were notified, on Monday, of EOC Training that would conflict. We were also notified of a faculty meeting this week. In light of these I should have scheduled my training for a different week, but oh well. My principal also holds a department chair meeting in the room I had reserved and she ran long. So we finally got into the room and got the training started.

I made a Prezi for this training (see previous blog post about this).  It was my first real Prezi and it seemed to run well.  I had to figure out some quirks of the Prezi, like my original presentation was too zoomed in.  (Tip: When you set the Path in Prezi, click on the Frame you want, not just the Text in the Frame.  When you click on the Text, it Zooms in to just that part and may cut off the Title and Frame).  The Prezi is pretty nice to organize all of you thoughts on one screen.  It also is a little easier to use than PowerPoint, especially when you are incorporating pictures, video, and fancy transitions.

There were 6-8 Team Managers in attendance, so not a big group, but a very motivated group.  They were very attentive and asked great questions.  The Prezi included just the basic thoughts of the presentation, the rest was explanations that I shared over the topic.  The whole event lasted for a little over an hour.  I may have to come up with more topics to share, or even come up with an Instant Challenge workshop for the kids to go through.

Destination Imagination - Instant Challenge TIPS

I have Appraised DI for that last 6 yrs, including 4 yrs at the State Level.  I have always Appraised Instant Challenge (IC), and typically they were technical challenges.  These are some thoughts I have decided to share with the world.  There are no spoilers, just thoughts on how to make your teams better.

There is a whole presentation that goes with this Prezi.  These are just the talking points

http://prezi.com/0zauphiin3-7/instant-challenge-destination-imagination/
http://tinyurl.com/irvingic 

Let me know what you think.

Wk 3 Reflection

This week has been brutal. I was out of town for the first half, and then watching my little one for the second half. So I was not able to get any of grad school work done until this weekend. AND, this weeks assignment was LOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG. It's 11:09pm and I am still working on it. This week we designed our own UDL Lesson Plan. Our group decided to cover the topic of Personal Finance and I chose to do a lesson on Balancing a Checkbook. I used the included UDL Lesson Plan Builder to create the lesson. This involved finding the appropriate TEKS and finding technology resources that fit the lesson. Then I needed to create an e-book to compliment my UDL. The e-book software was decent and had several advantages over something like PowerPoint. Read my review of the e-book here. (I have also just taught myself how to create a Prezi and I think it is AWESOME. I will be presenting to a group of team managers for Destination Imagination next week and look forward to using all these skills to impress them.) As far as my group is going, we were a little disconnected this week. Maybe me most of all. It was spring break and I think all of us were on different schedules. Next week should be better.

UDL and Technology

The videos this week focused on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) standards and the readings seemed to focus on the benefits of integrating technology into the classroom. I believe these go hand-in-hand and technology will be a driving factor when it to integrating UDL.

First, let me explain my take on UDL. Universal Design is the concept that some things should be the same regardless of location, language, or any other factors. Some great examples are Stop signs, cell phone "bars" and wheel chair access ramps. A stop sign should look the same everywhere, so that even if I go to Arkansas, I know when I need to stop. Cell phone manufacturers have decided to stick with a similar looking icon to show the strength of a cell phone signal so that customers can pick any cell phone and know how to read the display without too much concern. Universal Design is especially important when it comes to helping people with special needs. Someone in a wheelchair should have the same access to a building as someone walking. So we have all agreed that curb cutouts should be of a certain size and a certain slope. All buildings have braille placards at the same height on the wall so that blind people can find them easily. These are just a few examples that illustrate what Universal Design encompasses.

These same types of concepts are now being extended to a teacher's lesson plans with the Universal Design for Learning standards. This makes it so a teacher can specify a certain learning objective and meet the needs of all the children being taught. Each child comes with a unique background and should be allowed to learn the objective in the best way they can. And not all children learn the same way. Some children do well with a traditional lecture. Some children do better with self-discovery. And some children with special needs should be given the opportunity to learn the same material with the appropriate accommodations or modifications. For example, a non-narrated film on the transformation of a butterfly would be pretty useless to a vision impaired student, but might be perfect for a hearing impaired student. UDL allows the teacher to set the learning objective while still maintaining flexibility to meet each student's needs.

How does technology help? Technology allows the teachers and the students to find the resources they personally need to be successful. We can subtitle a film for the hearing impaired. We can have a screen reader for the vision impaired. We can let the GT kids dig deeper into the subject on their own, even after they have exhausted the teacher's knowledge. You can allow the ELL students the ability to create a presentation that expresses their thoughts in ways their language can't. The internet gives low socioeconomic students access to resources they do not have locally. I have students that have never physically seen a mountain, but they completely understand how the mountain was formed and what it looks like because of the resources available on the internet.

Without technology, UDL is a struggle. It is hard to find all the necessary resources many of our students need without access to the internet and the connected world. Books and DVDs work for many students, but not all. When we fully integrate technology in the classroom, we can let our students discover the world on the terms they need. I am a technology guy and I believe in technology. Now I need to work on my UDL skills. It is hard to let go of the reigns and let the students direct their own learning. It is hard to step back and just guide the search instead of giving the information. Gives us 5-10 years and I suspect school will be dramatically different.

Resources:

The Impact of Technology on Student Achievement

http://lessonbuilder.cast.org/

http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/

Constructivism and Technology

The videos and readings for this week centered around the concept of Constructivism. In short, Constructivism is the theory that true learning comes when we connect new concepts to prior experiences. When we tie a new concept to what we already know, it "constructs" a bridge and allows us to expand our overall thinking. Sometimes this new material is added to the previous knowledge, while other times it adjusts our existing ideas. For example, everybody knew the world was flat until we learned that it really wasn't and even then we had to see if for ourselves. Constructivism seems to be closely related to Project Based Learning (PBL). Students are given a broad project and guided to finding the appropriate information. In these student-centered situations the teacher takes a support and guidance role, instead of a direct information-giving role. This is a significant departure from the traditional classroom. Constructivism and PBL seem to be the future of education and I wish I could implement more of it in my classroom. My personal problem, and I think this may be a common problem, is my complete lack of experience when it comes to designing a constructivist lesson. I grew up in the traditional classroom. I did not do many projects in grade school or college. Most of my class time was spent listening to lectures, taking notes, and doing practice problems. This is what I know. This is what I am comfortable with. I would love to implement a constructivist project in my classroom, but I really do not know how. And I have not been able to locate the appropriate resources. I believe that my personal reservations are echoed by many of my peers. We want what is best for our students, but we do not know how to begin this journey.

The readings did reinforce my concept of technology use in the classroom. Technology is not a magic cure to fix our students problems. Often times, just simply adding technology will cause more problems if it is not implemented correctly. Technology is a just a tool. Just like books are just a tool. Technology can be as simple as an electronic book (and be just as boring). It can also be a fully interactive learning device that connects several topics at once. But all of this is dependent upon the implementation. This quote, from an example scenario in one of the readings, sums it up quite nicely; "technology is simply a tool that assists Elizabeth’s ongoing assessment of the students’ progress and supports her in her efforts to make learning interesting, engaging, and meaningful to the students. Technology is not the key to the learning experience Elizabeth’s students enjoy, just the infrastructure that makes her efforts productive and sustainable" (Sprague & Dede, 1999).
I believe the future of education will see Constructivism and technology combined into a seamless learner-centered lesson. We are still at the beginning stages of both. We see them being implemented successfully by some, while others are chipping away and trying them out. Eventually these two concepts will be as mundane as the overhead projector and we will look back and wonder how we used to think the world was flat because teachers stood up front and lectured to us about it.

Reference:
Sprague, D., & Dede, C. (1999). If i teach this way, am i doing my job: Constructivism in the classroom. Retrieved from http://imet.csus.edu/imet9/280/docs/dede_constructivisim.pdf

Course Reflection

The course embedded assignment for EDLD 5366 was to create a website with a group of peers in the class. The website would encompass all of the skills we had been working on in the previous weeks. These include the four design principles of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity (Williams, 2008), logo design, and animation.

Throughout the course we were introduced and taught to use different Web 2.0 tools to complete the assignments. I started this class thinking that I knew most of the Web 2.0 resources I would need, but quickly came to the realization that I did not know much about graphic design. This is an area that I am weak in. I have never been able to purchase or learn Photoshop. To my surprise, I discovered GIMP, as a decent replacement for Photoshop and it is FREE. Another big thing I learned in the class was utilize YouTube to find tutorials on any piece of software I needed to learn. I am amazed at what is available. This will be directly implemented in my classroom as I lead my students to use YouTube to find their own tutorials on anything they need. I will also try to extend this by allowing my students to create their own tutorials to share with the world.

To start our group website, we utilized Google Docs and other collaboration software to brainstorm our ideas. It was suggested that we create a fake Charter School and design a website based off of that. I suggested that we make it funny like the “Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too” (Stiller, 2001). But that idea was vetoed and we decided to make a serious effort at what a good school would look like. There are some funny tidbits hidden in the pages as inside jokes, but that was just for our group members. Each team member picked a page to focus on and we all went to work. I chose to work on the General Education/Teacher page because that is what I currently do and I felt comfortable sharing my knowledge in this area. I listed every website and resource I have used in my classroom and shared the ideas and uses for each piece of technology. I chose this approach because this is how I would want a Teacher page to look. It cuts right to the chase and gives examples of how to implement in the classroom. What it is lacking are resources I am not familiar with. As I stated earlier, I do not know everything and this page probably leaves out some very good resources that I have not come across, especially resources used in ELA and Social Studies. To improve this page, I would need to collaborate with other teachers from other subjects to compile a more complete list. The page should also include a place for people to suggest new or previously unknown resources. This way the page could stay fresh and up-to-date.

I believe the group website was a great project to incorporate everything we had learned in class, collaborate with my peers and create a product that can be shown to others. These are all real-world tasks that can easily be used in any field and should be taught to all students.


References:

Williams, Robin (2008-02-12). Non-Designer's Design Book, The (3rd Edition) (Kindle Location 1050). Pearson Education (US). Kindle Edition.

Stiller, B (Producer & Director). (2001). Zoolander [Film] Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures.

Ancient Text and Design Principles

As part of this weeks assignment for my grad school, I was to analyze an ancient text and see how the author used design principles to show the importance of the subject. I thumbed through a few texts available on the British Library's website; Sultan Baybar's Qur'an, Mercator Atlas of Europe, and Elizabeth Blackwell’s Curious Herbal. Each of these books were beautiful and full of detail, but for the purposes of this assignment I will analyze Elizabeth Blackwell’s Curious Herbal. The design principles I am looking at are Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity (CRAP, what a lovely acronym).

Curious Herbal is beautifully illustrated book of plants from MDCCXXXIX (1739). Each page is full of drawings with bright, contrasting colors. At the bottom of each page is a description of the plant and its parts. Each drawing includes a general view of the plant and a dissection of each of its parts. Each page has the same layout and alignment, bringing continuity to the book. Each plant occupies a single page and often times the dissection view is in close proximity to the part being dissected. Each part of the picture is numbered to give the reader a reference for the description at the bottom of the page. The same type of font is used throughout, but the author increases the size of the headings to help separate the pages into a logical manner. The author/illustrator uses the same shades of green throughout, but also uses very bright colors for the flowers to help create contrast to the pages. There is a clear left and right margin on each page and the use of white-space gives the book an airy feel. Overall the book is a great example of the four design principles; Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.