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[Music]
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If you're a camera, a 3D camera
and you're looking at her, and she's
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pointing in that direction. The question
is What do you call 'x'
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What do you call 'Y' and
what do you call 'z'.
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I would want to take all of the knowledge
that I've learned throughout this camp.
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Using Quorum and maybe develop my
own game. Maybe later down the line.
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I really want to teach others.
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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Technology jobs are in demand.
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And an understanding of computing and
coding are important for anyone pursuing
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these opportunities. But learning
programming languages can be difficult for
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any new student, including
some students with disabilities.
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That's why Quorum was created.
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My name is Andreas Stefik.
I am an assistant
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professor of Computer Science at The
University of Nevada Las Vegas.
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I invented the Quorum programming
language, at first, 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 help blind
and visually impaired students learn to
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program more easily.
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The reason was because at the time
a lot of computer science
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was moving toward
a very visual content.
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And that in general makes a lot of sense,
however, not if you're blind.
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I'm Richard Ladner,
professor in computer
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Science and engineering at the
University of Washington.
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So you really need similar code
to what you have there already.
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Children who are blind, who can't see
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
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for children, 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 every
body.
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I am Lauren Milne, I'm a graduate student
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at University of Washington
in Computer Science.
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I work with Richard Ladner
and I do a lot of research
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in programming languages
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,
it's very easy to incorporate
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audio in programs and a lot
of things that you can play
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around with in audio
so it means you can
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make really accessible,
you know, you can
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quickly and easily
make accessible games
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or whatever you'd
like using Quorum.
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Quorum's features are
universally designed
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Making it an easier language
to learn, in general.
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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 were
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
(language on screen)
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Which obviously means that we should do
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something 10 times. In Quorum,
I say repeat 10 times.
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I find, personally,
reading Quorum programs
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a lot easier than reading
C programs or
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Java programs.
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I can understand them more easily
and so I feel like there's some major
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advantages from the get go.
Just that simple elegance.
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Most languages,
after every single line
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you have to put a semi colon.
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Why do you have to put a semi colon?
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It seems to be just tradition.
It doesn't need to be there.
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And Quorum has no semi colons.
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They hypothesized that it
would be really good
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for certain students
with learning disabilities.
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Quorum doesn't use braces,
it uses indentation
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and it uses keywords instead
to indicate the end of loops.
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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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Over the years,
Quorum has gained popularity.
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I'm Dominic and I'm really into computers,
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and really enjoy using Quorum, and have
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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 like really easy because you
don't have to add in all the semi colons
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and all the annoying like #'s and @
symbols and everything.
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You just use words basically,
which is way easier than using
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all those confusing symbols
and I think that makes it
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easier for me to program
in Quorum than in other languages.
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Hi, I'm Alyssa.
What makes Quorum easier
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is the way they wrote,
the way they program
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for us to write the code.
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So we don't have to add
semi colons and brackets and
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paranthesis and all this stuff.
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They made it easier.
You can just type in a
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word "output" lets say for example and
then you can 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 other
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programming languages like Java.
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I'm Mary. You can do
a lot more things in
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Quorum with less lines
of code than in
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some other things that I've used before.
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Quorum is evidence based.
Using the results of
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Scientific experiments to
determine how to make
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the language easier to use.
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Quorum provides two primary benefits.
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
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to people are vetted
both by teachers and
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students and are
vetted in experiments
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through the scientific method.
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The result is a programming language
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that is creating a more
inviting environment
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for computing students.
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A lot of people,
I have seen this
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in intro classes that I've taught,
they come in and they get
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really intimidated when
they start programming.
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There's all sorts of bugs,
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 come into a
college course with previous
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programming experience.
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Anything that lowers that initial entry
is going to bring a lot more people,
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a lot more diversity because of that.