Ben Hughes, year 10 student from Highams Park School joined Firefly for a week of work experience. Here are his thoughts on how the week went.
I use Firefly at school so I was aware it was a tool schools used which allowed students to receive homework from teachers digitally or for students to view revision.
My teacher Mr. Barker received an email from Firefly giving 2 digital leaders the opportunity to come down for a week for work experience. Digital leaders are students that edit pages from my school's Firefly and having been a digital leader for 3 years since January 2015, I thought it would be good to see how Firefly worked from the other side. Unfortunately my friends; the other year 10 digital leaders, already had their work experience sorted so couldn't share this experience with me.
My first day was interesting. I was mainly excited but also a bit terrified of the 3 trains I had to take. I was nervous I would get on the wrong train or miss my stop (luckily that hasn't happened yet). I mainly spent my first day on tech support work with Jordan but I also got the chance to meet other people and learn about what they did within the company. My days were well-organised by Sophie and my schedule included a bit of everything but was also left open for anything extra I was interested in.
Before I started my work experience at Firefly I wasn't sure of what to expect to be honest. But I've enjoyed learning about what the company does. I got to learn about the history of the company and how the 2 co-founders started it at school in 2000 (when the internet was new-ish especially doing something like this as a hobby). I enjoyed learning about how the tech was designed and coded and how phone calls and emails were responded to. But I'd have to say the bit I enjoyed the most was meeting Joe (one of the co-founders) and learning about how the company started and how Firefly has grown these past 18 years.