WEBVTT

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[music]

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>> Instructor: If you’re a camera,
a 3D camera,

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and you’re looking at her,

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and she’s pointing in that direction,

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the question is

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what do you call X,

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what do you call Y,

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and what do you call Z?

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>> Student: I would want to take

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all the knowledge that I've learned
throughout this camp using Quorum

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and maybe develop my own game
maybe later down the line.

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>> Student: I really want to teach others.

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That’s sort of
what I like to do

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and with Quorum I can
do that much easier.

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[music]

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>> Instructor: We’re now going to say "box."

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>> Narrator: Technology jobs are in demand

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and an understanding
of computing and coding

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are important for anyone
pursuing these opportunities.

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But learning programming languages
can be difficult for any new student

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including some students
with disabilities.

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That’s why Quorum was created.

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>> Andreas Stefik: My name is Andreas Stefik.

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I'm an assistant professor
of computer science

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at the University of Nevada
at Las Vegas.

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I invented the Quorum
programming language at first

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then my wife and I

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actually created several
versions of it together.

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It was originally designed
to try to help

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blind or visually impaired students
learn to program more easily.

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The reason is because at the time
a lot of computer science

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was moving toward
very visual content

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and that in general
makes a lot of sense,

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however, not if you're blind.

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>> Richard Ladner: I'm Richard Ladner,

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professor in Computer Science and Engineering
at the University of Washington.

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>> Richard to student: So you really need
similar code

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to what you have there already.

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>> Richard: Children who are blind,
who can't see,

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can actually program in Quorum

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and make things that talk
or have sound or have music

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so they're not always so visual.

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If you look at almost all the tools
that are out there for children,

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they're all super visual

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and this one is visual and auditory

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so that makes it much better
for everybody.

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>> Lauren Milne: I'm Lauren Milne
and I'm a graduate student

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at the University of Washington
in computer science.

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I work with Richard Ladner

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and I do a lot of research
in programming languages,

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specifically for blind students.

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It has full support for screen readers
and Braille displays

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and it has a lot of features.

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it's very easy to incorporate
audio in programs

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and a lot of things you can
play around with in audio

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so it means you can
make really accessible,

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you can quickly and easily
make accessible games

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or whatever you'd like
using Quorum.

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>>Narrator: Quorum’s features
are universally designed,

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making it an easier language
to learn in general.

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>>Andreas: One of the reasons
why Quorum is easier

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in some cases for people
to learn and grasp

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is because the language is simpler

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which impacts people
with learning disabilities.

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For example, if I was to
tell the computer

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to do something
over and over again

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in a language like Java
I would say

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for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {

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Which "obviously" means that
we should do something 10 times.

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In Quorum, I say

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repeat 10 times.

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>>Richard: I find personally
reading Quorum programs

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a lot easier than reading
C programs or Java programs.

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That I can understand them more easily
and so I feel like there are some

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major advantages from the get-go.

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Just that simple elegance.

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Most languages after every single line
you have to put a semicolon.

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Why you have to put a semicolon,
it seems to be just tradition.

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It doesn't need to be there
and Quorum has no semicolons.

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>> Lauren: I hypothesize
it could be really good

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for certain students with
learning disabilities

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that Quorum doesn't use braces;
it uses sort of indentations

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and it uses the word, keywords instead
to indicate the end of loops.

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>> Andreas to students: I want you
to type the word "model"

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and then I want you to
type the word "box."

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Now there’s a red underline here
because we haven’t added...

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>> Narrator: Over the years,
Quorum has gained popularity.

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>> Dominic: I'm Dominic and
I'm really into computers

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and really enjoy using Quorum

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and have used other computer
programs before like C++ and Java.

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One of the things that stands out
to me in Quorum is the punctuation

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and it's really easy because
you don't have to add in

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all the semicolons and all the annoying
hash tags and "@" symbols and everything.

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You just use words basically
which is way easier

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than using all those
confusing symbols

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and I think that makes it easier
for me to program in Quorum

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than other languages.

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>> Alyssa: Hi, I'm Alyssa.

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What makes Quorum easier
is the way they wrote,

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the way they program
for us to write the code.

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So we don't have
to add semicolons

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and brackets and parentheses
and all the stuff.

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They made it easier.

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You can just type in a word,
"output" let’s say, for example,

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and then you could
write in quotes

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whatever you want
the computer to say

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and that's what makes it
a lot more unique than

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other programming languages
like Java.

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>> Mary: I’m Mary.

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You can do a lot more things
in Quorum with less lines of code

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than in some other things
I've used before.

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>> Narrator: Quorum is evidence-based,

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using the results of
scientific experiments

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to determine how to make
the language easier to use.

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>> Andreas: Quorum provides
two primary benefits.

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One is everything is free

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and then number two:
at the end of the day

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all of the materials that we use
and that we give to people

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are vetted both by
teachers and students

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and are vetted in experiments
through the scientific method.

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>> Narrator: The result
is a programming language

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that is creating a more inviting
environment for computing students.

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>> Lauren: A lot of people -
I've seen in intro classes that I've taught.

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They come in, you know, and they
get really intimidated at first

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when they start programming
and there's all sorts of bugs

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and it can be very frustrating.

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People drop out and very often
the only people who stick around

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are people who have come in,
who come into the college course

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with previous programming experience.

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Anything that lowers that initial entry

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is going to bring a lot more people,
a lot more diversity, because of that.