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Shannon Firth

Senior Writer and Audience Development Coordinator

Shannon has been with findingDulcinea since February 2008. She helps with site promotion by exploring partnerships, attending conferences, and engaging readers through social media channels. As a writer, her interests include psychology, science, literature, and human rights. She has a B.A. in Psychology and English from Georgetown University. To get updates from Shannon, follow her on Twitter.

Favorite Web site:
Salon
Psychology Today
 Pandora


Most Recent Articles by Shannon Firth

  • Synesthesia: Fusion of the Senses
    Does the taste of chicken feel pointy to you? Does the letter W seem red or the number 7 yellow, regardless of its print color? Exact responses may differ, but if you’ve ever associated words or numbers with colors or tastes, you might have synesthesia.
  • The Secret Lives of Writers’ Wives
    Vladimir Nabokov; James Joyce; F. Scott Fitzgerald. These are names of the literary giants of the 20th century. But they didn’t get there on their own.

    Vera; Nora; Zelda. These are the names of the great writers’ wives—not as well known, perhaps, but essential. Whether as housekeeper, editor, secretary, or muse, they made it possible for their husbands to make masterpieces.
  • Educators That Rock!: Danah Boyd
    Last week, findingEducation caught up with Dr. danah boyd at the American Association of School Librarians National Conference in Charlotte, N.C. boyd is an internationally recognized social media expert researcher for Microsoft Research New England, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and an ethnographer, blogger and contributing author to the book “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.”

    boyd explains on her blog that “there are a lot of reasons … some personal and some political” as to why she decided to omit the capital letters in her name. A keynote speaker at the conference, she drew from her research on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook to explain how kids use these tools to communicate and to “create digital bodies” to express themselves.

    In her online biography, boyd describes herself as a bored and rebellious student that went to “smart kids camp” in the summer but had trouble fitting in until she went online. “The Internet opened the door of possibilities to me. I found other smart kids year round ... Strangers taught me so much about the world and about myself,” she wrote.

    “Unstructured environments are critical to social learning,” boyd said in her talk. Educators must “work with the grain, not against it.” She told findingEducation, “It's not about getting kids to be passionate about the things that librarians and teachers are passionate about, but using what kids are passionate about as gateways to learning.”
  • Stressed-Out Kids Need Quiet Time
    In difficult times, parental stress can impact children’s health. Teaching and modeling the right behavior and coping strategies can reduce worry and lighten the burden of stress.
  • Educators That Rock!: Blake Harrison

    This week findingEducation caught up with Blake Harrison, a.k.a. Emcee Escher, rapper, educator and creative director of Flocabulary, to hear how he and Alex Rappaport, cofounder and executive producer, are bringing their energy and passion for hip-hop to the classroom.

    By weaving words into rhymes with infectious beats, Harrison and Rappaport knew they could engage students and ultimately teach them something. Their first CD, released in 2004, put vocabulary words in context, helping prepare students for the SATs. Since then, they’ve developed programs for teaching world and U.S. history, math, science and even Shakespeare. They’ve taken their music on tour, held teaching workshops and created a current events series called The Week in Rap, now being broadcast on Channel One, a national TV news network for teens.