
Wyoming Passes Forward-Thinking Computer Science Education Bill - sizzle
https://edscoop.com/wyoming-passes-forward-thinking-computer-science-education-bill
======
ldayley
I’ve lived in Wyoming in the past (one of the pretty parts), it’s different
than most places.

The key to understanding this bill is that Wyoming is subsidized entirely by
energy exploration. There is no corporate or individual income tax, low
property and sales taxes and no will to raise them any time soon. With coal,
natural gas, and oil prices permanantly sagging they’re thrashing around
looking for ways to replace those royalties. This is one of the prongs in the
state’s new approach, they are also drafting legislation attempting to
capitalize on blockchain tech using thier biz-friendly culture and cheap
energy.

I hope they figure it out, people I care about have jobs tied to state
funding.

~~~
adventured
Oil prices permanently sagging?

WTI futures are at $65 and heading north. Most oil production in the US is now
solidly profitable at those levels. Some of that production is extremely
profitable there, which is why US oil production has been soaring. The dollar,
which heavily dictates the price of oil, is heading south with the vast
endless sea of budget deficits inbound over the next ten years.

Higher commodities prices due to a debased dollar, is an easy bet for the next
decade. The trade wars will likely make the dollar damage worse.

~~~
soundwave106
I think it's credible to be concerned about a government that is funded
entirely based on fossil fuels, given the likelihood of electric vehicles and
renewables / alternatives playing an increasing role in transportation and
energy in the future.

Medium term, this is probably not an issue, IMHO. But the outlook could be
grim if "peak oil" actually happens due to lack of demand, and no reform has
happened. The Economist pointed out ([https://www.economist.com/news/special-
report/21738583-tradi...](https://www.economist.com/news/special-
report/21738583-traditional-oil-producers-suggest-clean-energy-not-threat-
middle-east-and-russia)) that this already has happened in Venezuela (a very
different situation than Wyoming in terms of government contract, of course,
but one that shows the dangers of overreliance.)

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pw
Ha! Former Wyomingite here. The key person mentioned in this article--State
Superintendent Jillian Balow--was my junior high English teacher. I can
safely, and, sadly, assure you these folks have no idea what they're doing. In
recent years, Wyoming has made a habit of cargo-culting tech trends and this
is just the latest. It will invariably be a boondoggle like all the rest.

~~~
galieos_ghost
All it really takes is awareness. There's a lot of untapped talent in these
states where for most most kids CS isn't even on the map as a career path,
where I'm from smart kids get told to be doctors or lawyers. I didn't start
coding until I was in college and went from nothing to full stack development
with some machine learning skills in 12 months through self-teaching. I wish
I'd had something like this when I was younger. Even if the implementation is
awful some kids will take to it like a sponge and continue learning on their
own.

~~~
Avamander
I totally agree with what you said. I'm really quite sad how late I got into
programming (at 14) by basically some random occurrence. Yeah, at the moment
I'm ahead of my peers by significant amounts, but I know I could have
done\would be doing a lot more, a lot more efficiently if I had had any formal
education from the start on related topics, lessons that start with the
sentence "Today we're learning how to use Microsoft Word" don't really count.

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hortonew
How do you identify one capable to teach CS, capable to teach ages K-12, and
willing to work for very little pay? Is the goal to train existing teachers
(would they make more money because of it?), or hire a CS veteran to teach?

~~~
caust1c
My guess would be training. You can have an online-supplemented course where
most of the material is pre-canned and the teachers know just enough to guide
the students through a semester or a year of class.

I doubt they intend on teaching much beyond the basics at that level, which
shouldn't be hard for any teacher to learn.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Good Lord. Here's an excellent talk about why mathematics teachers should know
mathematics:
[https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf](https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf)

That's mathematics, not didactics of mathematics.

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fred_is_fred
"With a population of just 579,315, Wyoming is positioning itself to become a
leader in one of the fastest-growing industries in the world: cybersecurity."

No it's not.

Outside of Jackson and environs it is frankly a miserable place to live.
Imagine a wind-swept steppe petro-state inhabited by a mostly rural, extremely
conservative population. Cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and
perpetually windy. I could say "windy" 8 more times and it still wouldn't
capture the reality. Like many states in this position, mostly rural, most
jobs don't require a degree, almost everyone who gets one leaves for better
pay, usually to Colorado.

I do believe that this bill is a great idea, but it's not going to magically
transform their economy.

~~~
klint
And Jackson is really expensive. Not quite Bay Area expensive yet, but Seattle
area expensive. There are some parts of the state that are cheaper, beautiful,
and less wind blown, like the Big Horn mountain area where I grew up. But
they're still cold, conservative places dominated by the extractive
industries. I got out as soon as I could.

It is nice to see the state making an effort to attract new industries, but
it's really hard going. This Bloomberg article[1] sums it up pretty well: The
small population is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. People don't want to
live there because there are no jobs, and companies don't want to relocate
there because there are no people.

There's also cultural resistance to new industry. People (men especially) want
their coal and oil and timber jobs back, not these new high-tech jobs. It's
not even that the populace isn't smart enough to do them--mining is actually a
pretty technical field at this point. But there's a deep rooted perception
that sitting at a desk all day isn't a "real" job.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-19/why-
wyomi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-19/why-wyoming-is-
in-economic-trouble)

~~~
elcritch
> There are some parts of the state that are cheaper, beautiful, and less wind
> blown, like the Big Horn mountain area where I grew up. But they're still
> cold, conservative places dominated by the extractive industries. I got out
> as soon as I could.

Personally I prefer the more conservative environs versus the often over-
bearing liberal attitude which dominates the Bay Area or other large cities.
Perhaps the cold wind blown regions help people keep a level head. ;) So it's
a matter of perspective.

Regardless, there are a lot of beautiful parts of the state and the K-12
education in many parts of the state excels [1]. Partly thats due to taxes
from the mineral extraction industries.

> There's also cultural resistance to new industry. ... It's not even that the
> populace isn't smart enough to do them--mining is actually a pretty
> technical field at this point.

Unfortunately the cultural resistance to new industries does exist and dampens
the development of new industries. Wyoming has a lot of talented industrially
minded people. Many people grow up mechanically inclined due to the culture
(here and surrounding states). This leads to younger Wyoming residents who are
much more open to technology industries and looking for ways to stay in the
state and willing to start businesses or create new technologies [2, 3].
There's also technology initiatives by the University of Wyoming, which due to
the small population, have a impact across the state [4]. There is even some
interesting deep learning research happening at the university in conjunction
with a well known SV company [5].

All in all, the state has a small population but a relatively out-sized
opportunities for those inclined to find them. Initiatives like the one in the
article do make an impact here.

1: [http://trib.com/news/local/education/wyoming-ranked-th-in-
na...](http://trib.com/news/local/education/wyoming-ranked-th-in-national-
education-quality-report-
says/article_a2b58314-784f-5b2b-940c-f204c5e0a4ca.html) 2:
[http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/laramie-farming-start-
has...](http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/laramie-farming-start-has-plenty-
more-investors-after-merger#stream/0) 3: [https://gizmodo.com/maximize-a-lazy-
summer-afternoon-with-th...](https://gizmodo.com/maximize-a-lazy-summer-
afternoon-with-this-absurd-raft-1774887127) 4:
[https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/19/wyoming-and-
new-h...](https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/19/wyoming-and-new-
hampshire-teachers-ramp-up-stem-expertise.aspx) 5:
[https://eng.uber.com/vine/](https://eng.uber.com/vine/)

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ams6110
But how do they define "computer science?" At my kids' school it's learning
about Microsoft Office.

~~~
cbcoutinho
In high school I took a MS Office class my senior year - that was pretty much
the extent of it. That was the beginning of my CS career, and I'm grateful
that it was offered.

~~~
zrobotics
Honestly, the 'office skills' class I took was one of the most genuinely
useful courses I took in middle school, simply for the keyboarding
instruction. Although in 06 my high school, which was very proud of it's Cisco
networking programs, didn't offer any CS courses.

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caust1c
This is great! But I wouldn't call it forward thinking. Forward thinking would
be doing this in the early 90s. At this point it's very much reactionary.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
As opposed to all the places you can’t get computer science education outside
of college? I’d say they are ahead of most.

I was lucky computer science was taught in my highschool, but I’ve been
shocked how much of the country doesn’t have it.

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kevindong
Here's the actual bill:
[http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2018/Enroll/SF0029.pdf](http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2018/Enroll/SF0029.pdf)

~~~
pflats
Not bad.

The best change in real-world implementation is probably going to be letting
high school kids take CS for math or science credit. Opens up a lot of options
for students.

The next big issue:

"Each school district within the state shall provide educational programs
sufficient to meet uniform student content and performance standards at the
level established by the state board of education in the following areas of
knowledge and skills."

Now the BoE has to establish good CS standards. I don't really love the CSTA
standards (my issues with which are beyond the scope of this post) but they're
a decent starting point.

[http://www.csteachers.org/page/standards](http://www.csteachers.org/page/standards)

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aakash58
Passing a bill is certainly a small step forward but the focus should be in
the implementation (like in every other thing) and the details within it.
Factors such as the provision and quality of teacher training, resources for
teachers to integrate CS in the classrooms, support for students to work on
meaningful projects rather than dry, academic projects, and job prospects will
probably be more influential in making this a "forward-thinking" step.

~~~
elcritch
See my other comment, the Arduino education program for teachers takes a hands
on approach to educating teachers around the state.

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scarface74
I've seen so many articles about schools teaching coding and acting like it's
a new phenomenon. I took an AppleSoft Basic coding class in both middle school
in 1988 and high school in 1992. Both in regular public high school. Did
schools stop offering programming classes?

~~~
sli
> Did schools stop offering programming classes?

Yeah, pretty much. My high school nixed their programming and other CS-related
classes while I was a sophomore. This was 2001. Probably a terrible move, but
they did it anyway. I assume they've wisely brought them back by now.

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whatyoucantsay
This appears backward thinking. A focus in CS would have paid off
spectacularly over the _past_ 25 years.

Forward looking might involve focussing rather more on the human capabilities
hardest for machines to replicate—relationship building, comedy, sales, and
one on one coaching or counseling.

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hugh4life
While this is a good thing, I don't see this helping them out as a state. TBH,
this could even result in more people to move out. This is actually a huge
problem throughout the whole world where where the top talent gets scooped up
in the most developed areas.

For this effort not to go to waste on other states(and states are not the
nation and nor are they families so it may not be a big concern), Wyoming
would have to improve it's infrastructure and turn itself into a migrant hub
for the type of people they'd want in. And I don't think the Richard Florida
methods are going to work.

My advice for Wyoming is to court rich billionaires who want to be in charge
of their own cities. Or intentional communities for higher IQ ethnic/religious
groups that want some kind of cultural autonomy.

[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-bill-gates-wants-
to...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-bill-gates-wants-to-build-
an-80m-smart-city-utopia-in-arizona/)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
What is Jackson Hole if not a rich playground. I can’t see it developing much
of a tech industry, however.

~~~
zrobotics
The trouble is, very few of those rich people actually live here, aside from
vacations and for tax purposes. Sadly, most people here (especially the
politicians) seem convinced that this current coal bust is part of the normal
cycle, and the revenues will come back in a few years. At the point that even
China is looking to reduce coal usage for environmental reasons, I highly
doubt that the mine revenues will ever return to peak levels.

The only tech that the state seems to have attracted is datacenters, but those
don't provide much in the way of tax revenues or jobs.

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nemild
I'm confused, what does better early computer science education have to do
with cybersecurity?

~~~
Spooky23
The latter is attracting a lot of dumb money and grants to pay for the former.

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scroot
Given what they'll probably teach, I bet it's actually backward-thinking

~~~
Larrikin
This seems like a really bad attitude to have against people that are trying
to improve in a meaningful way. It's like making fun of an overweight person
sweating hard in the gym.

~~~
kriffo
Yes, let's try to have some more empathy for people who are overweight or live
in Wyoming.

~~~
rpcope1
Seriously though, what's wrong with living in Wyoming?

