Techlearning blog

I recently wrapped up grant season in my world. I needed to cleanse the bad karma created by overusing "21st century skills" to get my point across on paper. I found the perfect cure.

Marcia Aas is a Library Media Specialist in one of my schools. A while back we were talking about the generational differences in technology use, i.e. "digital immigrants vs. natives", and she began telling me about her son. Marcia had that "mother talking about what her son does" sort of tone. Extremely proud with a slight scent of confused. "He works on the Macintosh version of Firefox. Next time he's in town you'll have to visit."

Josh came to town today. Marcia bribed her school administrators to free up a few classes of middle and high school students to listen for an hour of what "21st century skills" actually looks like. I got the chance to be the interviewer/moderator. It was the most powerful way of cleansing the karma of grant buzzword bingo that has plagued my last two weeks.

"Software Engineer for Firefox" admittedly skews extreme when describing what the world of work is like for those in their 20's today. Nonetheless, it's a great story about how modern day successful companies work.

Josh is exceptional. He continually reiterated two points. "Be curious." Find out why and how things work. With the Internet there are infinite resources available to answer any question. "Math." The answer doesn't matter. The process does. "If you can do math, you can figure out anything." We saw snippets of Firefox code that looked like a cross between poetry and math.

Firefox is exceptional. The browser many of us know and use has a great story behind it. Mozilla, the parent organization of the project, has somewhere in the ballpark of 150 paid employees. The mission is simple. Advance the Internet. It's the most successful "open" software projects today. A small group of employees and a community of 20,000 volunteers all working on a project that's owned by everybody.

It's a different style of work. Josh lives in Philadelphia and works out of the San Francisco offices. The typical day involves hopping in a chat room around 9:00 am. Meetings occur mid-day when time zones are less of an issue. Development never stops, it's simply passed around the world in a continuous loop. Nobody is punching a clock. Josh spends a week each month in San Francisco at Mozilla's offices. Lunches, dinners, and all you can eat snacks are available. There's a theatre stocked with movies, a game room with all the popular console games, and comfy chairs. Play hard, work hard. The organization works equally hard keeping good employees as they do finding them.

21st century skills in a 21st century workplace. I'm done using those terms. It's 2008. I'll just call it Josh. Take some time to find a few real examples in your own community of what it means to be successful today.