Wyoming Passes Forward-Thinking Computer Science Education Bill
edscoop.com
edscoop.com
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.
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.
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...) 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.)
why don't you go on and do it then with a good argument. No need to go all out, a glimpse of an argument would help, otherwise mentioning a person from what, 10 to 20 years ago is simply ad-hominem. There is no doubt that cs education is more than a fad.
It's just a matter of marshaling the right talent to build the right parts of it.
I doubt they intend on teaching much beyond the basics at that level, which shouldn't be hard for any teacher to learn.
That's mathematics, not didactics of mathematics.
Your proposition also assumes that you have enough Maths teachers, which Australia is certainly lacking (for the same reasons as OP)
This gets complicated because of teacher's unions, but I think it's the best bet at getting high quality folks in CS classrooms.
Others will mention HS math teachers. Having spent enough time in US k12 classrooms to have an opinion on this topic, I think this can work out really well, but I'm not at all convinced it's a panacea. Mostly because many, many HS math teachers have learned how to teach specific math courses, but don't actually have a firm understanding of mathematical thinking in general. Training them to become CS teachers will fare about as well as teaching history teachers to become CS teachers (again, it can be great but lots of variance).
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.
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...
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... 2: http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/laramie-farming-start-has... 3: https://gizmodo.com/maximize-a-lazy-summer-afternoon-with-th... 4: https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/19/wyoming-and-new-h... 5: https://eng.uber.com/vine/
* Google maps told me to get off at Exit 29B. It turns out it was exit 298, just somehow Google maps had only OCRed the signs, and as of summer 2017 no one had cared to correct them.
* Screw LTE or 3G, somehow the city center only had 2G. Outside of the city, even with visible line of sight, there was simply no service.
* I ordered biscuits and gravy at a restaurant for breakfast. I was informed that it would be a few minutes, as the owner's daughter needed to go down to the grocery store and pick up another can of biscuits.
* At said restaurant, I was asked if I wanted smoking or non. The two rooms had no separation, and both were filled with smoke.
I love Wyoming, it's a beautiful state and I'll be back this year, but they aren't going to be the next forefront on cybersecurity.
Then I went to a restaurant and was charged $15 for coffee.
There also seemed to be a lot of people who had become homeless.
Terribly slow and difficult city; I don't see how it gets anything done.
I'm saying that Wyoming doesn't have the physical, financial, and educational infrastructure to support a modern computer industry.
EDIT: also, I don't live in San Fran.
Outside of Cheyenne and Jackson Hole, what I listed is extremely representative of Wyoming. Cheyenne isn't much better, and the whole point of Jackson Hole is to get away from computers for a while.
Edit: also this was Buffalo, so it was a full on incorporated city of thousands.
Indeed, Casper then Cheyenne have the most modern economic situation Wyoming has to offer.
Which is still pretty shitty. I live in Casper, and tech jobs are basically non-existent. I know of some places that hire people for PLC stuff. Outside of that there are three places I could work as a developer.
Cheyenne may be different. I've noticed they have tech meetups, a tech bootcamp, etc.
The root post on this is harsh but accurate in my opinion.
But the town does have two redboxes, so it's got that going for it...
I know a couple of people in that area (a bit up the mountain to the east) that choose to live there. One is a CostCo executive that is the regional manager some vertical (I want to say produce, but that might not be right) for most of the stores of the north half of everything west of the rockies. He's on the road a lot, but seems to want to live there. The other is an IT guy (well, internal developer) for Whole Foods and moved there and works remotely. Now - Montana is a more common place for remote hermit developers to go to, but a shocking number of retired/retiring people move to Buffalo. (Well, shocking to me because I wouldn't, but for a town of 4,500-or-so of that particular average age, having the influx-rate match (or exceed) the death-rate is in itself surprising (to me). It also fluctuates a lot with oil & natural gas prices -- I think the population was down around 3,000 by mid-2015)
I figured there would be more than two or three, since they forced us to take it, but there were not.
I was lucky computer science was taught in my highschool, but I’ve been shocked how much of the country doesn’t have it.
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.
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.
Basically. Sometime around the late 90s - early 2000s many schools started to drop computer classes.
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.
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...
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.
The key question is whether they can identify competent people to do so. Recognizing an expert in a field where you are not an expert is always a difficult problem.