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Hobart, IN---The College of Court Reporting (CCR) recently participated in National Court Reporting and Captioning Week, a grassroots effort to raise awareness about the professions of court reporting and broadcast captioning. One way that professionals were able to show how invaluable court reporting is to our country was to contribute their skills to the Veteran’s History Project. Reporters all across the country have banded together for over 12 years to produce transcripts of the oral histories of our veterans. Deborah Cohen-Rojas, a CCR graduate, was one of those reporters who volunteered her abilities.

In a recent news broadcast on WGN Chicago, Deb can be seen writing on her steno machine to the sound of a former soldier’s legacy. She then produced a transcript that was uploaded to the Veteran’s History Project website. This flawless record of personal histories might have otherwise been lost. There are now over 85,000 oral histories preserved by the Library of Congress, courtesy of court reporters much like Deb.

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CCR students (onsite AND online), faculty, and staff - DON'T FORGET SPIRIT WEEK STARTING MONDAY!!!!

Take a picture of yourself and post it here on our CCR Facebook page. Whoever gets the most likes each day for their themed costume, gets a prize!!! The days are as follows:

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NATIONAL COURT REPORTING AND CAPTIONING WEEK – FEBRUARY 17-23
College of Court Reporting to join nationwide effort to recognize professionals, career opportunities in stenographic court reporting, and captioning

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Hobart, IN--This fall, College of Court Reporting (CCR) was one of four colleges in the nation to receive a U.S. Department of Education's "Training for Realtime Writers" grant. CCR will use grant funds to train and place students in the field to help meet the national demand for qualified court reporters and realtime writers.

With this grant of $300,000, CCR's first phase of spending will come in the form of scholarships for 36 of their currently enrolled court reporting students. The 36 students receiving awards were selected through a scholarship competition.

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Since I’ve been at CCR, I have overcome many challenges. The most important and significant challenges I’ve overcome are my stagnant speed, inadequate motivation, and limited skill set. I was at another school and struggling in each of these areas, but within a very short amount of time, I started seeing noticeable differences manifesting in each.

First, I was experiencing a plateau while working on my 100s. After I started at CCR, attended live speedbuilding classes, listened to recorded speedbuilding classes, and used ev360, my speed increased considerably. I passed 19 SAPs the first month, 7 SAPs the second month, and 4 SAPs the third month. I suddenly found myself writing at 140 words per minute. Shortly thereafter, I passed another SAP at 160 words per minute. Not only did I break through that plateau, I exploded through it!

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Moodle makes it easy to keep track of your course’s online discussions by using email notifications.  However, improper settings can result in too many emails.  This handout will show you how to control these notifications, and keep your inbox uncluttered.

There are two places where you need to keep track of your settings: your personal profile settings that control settings for all of your classes and individual forums you want to follow.

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People frequently ask: How did I start a school with three students in my home, and how did it become the best court reporting program in the country? The answer is that it was not planned, it just happened. Although the College of Court Reporting officially became a school in 1984, the beginning goes back a few years before that.

When I was in high school, my dad insisted that I learn Gregg shorthand. I was so fascinated with it that I decided to work as secretary when I graduated; but after a year, I felt I wanted more education and went to Indiana University where I graduated with a bachelor's degree, majoring in vocational education and English. I taught high school for a few years while my husband was in law school. After he finished school and began practicing, I stayed home until 1976 when our youngest child went to school. I didn't want to return to teach high school; and my husband, a state court judge at that time, brought home a little machine -- something his court reporter used that was a form of shorthand. Wow! I was impressed. I had always loved shorthand and typing and "machine steno" looked fascinating; therefore, I immediately enrolled in a local court reporting school.

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Hobart, IN--- Each year the Illinois Court Reporters Association holds a scholarship essay contest. The author of the first place essay receives a $1,000 scholarship, and the authors of the second and third place essays receive $500 and $300 scholarships. To apply, students are required to submit a one-page essay on “Court Reporting School: My Own Survival Guide.” The College of Court Reporting is pleased to announce that the 2012 first and second place award recipients are College of Court Reporting students Shannon Barnes and Susan Kemph.

Ms. Barnes enrolled with the College of Court Reporting in our Summer 2010 semester after completing an Associate’s degree in Business. She learned the Moody Method steno theory as a new student and was writing at 120 words per minute within the first year of her court reporting education. Ms. Barnes is a perennial honor student and has been nominated on several occasions for the Student of the Month distinction. Her instructors never run out of positive things to say about her work ethic and drive to become a court reporter. The first place award certainly found an appropriate recipient in Ms. Barnes as she is most deserving.

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I feel quite fortunate to have attended the NCRA convention in Philadelphia this past August. This year’s theme of “Dream. Believe. Inspire” were quite apropos. The wonderful experiences that I enjoyed were many. There were two things that I came away with that helped to not only clarify, but electrify my insatiable desire to become a court reporter, and I found both in my “favorite seminar” and my “favorite highlight” of the convention.

My favorite seminar was “Your Professional Career in Realtime Reporting.” This presentation opened up the possibilities of entering different arenas of court reporting that are available to me. I have always been a proponent (for myself)of becoming a freelance reporter, but I didn’t realize that there is such a demand for realtime reporters. Being the sports fanatic that I am, by becoming a realtime reporter I could parlay my court reporting talents into captioning various sporting events, allowing me to combine my enjoyment of sports with the incredible career of court reporting that awaits me at the end of this journey.

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The National Court Reporters Association Convention in Philadelphia was beneficial as both a student and future reporter. There were obvious highlights, including getting test advice from speed champions and seeing the scoreboard room at the Phillies baseball game. However, the entire convention experience was extremely motivating and peppered with lessons along the way.

Listening to speed champions really was the most useful session as student. For better or worse, progressing in school is based on tests. So often we know that we have a speed under out belt but test anxiety gets the better of us. Each speaker had different advice, which I greatly appreciated. I will try it all and leave behind what doesn’t work for me. I am also reading a book that was recommended during the session called The Mental Edge by Kenneth Baum.

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Hobart, IN--- Stacy Drohosky, College of Court Reporting graduate, was recently awarded the United States District Court’s Northern District of Indiana’s 2012 Professionalism Award. Not only was she nominated for the award by Peggy Guernsey, District Clerk for the Northern District of Indiana, but Stacy was also voted the number one reporter in the system by the court reporters of the same district. Ms. Guernsey had this to say of Stacy:

Stacy promptly accepts requests for Court Reporting services for judicial officers (Judge Cherry and others) when not otherwise reporting for her own Court (Judge Moody). These trials are sometimes not only multiple days, but out-of-Division (Lafayette). She also completes detention hearing and/or motion hearing transcripts in magistrate cases where FTR is used when requested by counsel.

The Court receives competent, prompt, Court Reporter Services without interruption of flow of Court proceedings. The ability to have a Real Time Reporter makes for efficient work presentation and judicial proceedings. Stacy is saving the District and taxpayers large sums of money that otherwise would be required for a contract reporter.

Stacy is always pleasant, cooperative, dependable, and conducts herself with professionalism. She performs long work days without complaining. Daily trial transcripts are often requested and provided without delay. She is very pleasant to work with and fulfills the Court’s/Clerk’s Office mission by providing quality, courteous, and prompt service with a commitment to professionalism, teamwork, and efficiency.

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Hobart, IN---The National Court Reporter Association held their annual convention during the second weekend of August in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Among the various court reporting vendors, schools, and professionals, College of Court Reporting had the greatest representation of students and faculty.  Their forty-plus attendees made their presence known throughout the convention hall as they demonstrated new technologies and handed out free T-shirts. Approximately 20 percent of the students in attendance at the national convention were College of Court Reporting students.

The focus of the College's attendance at the convention was to promote the school's newly offered ev360 Professional technologies to students, schools, and professionals.  ev360 Professional offers students, schools, and working reporters the opportunity to practice and advance their skill using LIVE and recorded virtual classes, thousands of hours of audio and text practice at speeds up to 350 words per minute, over 7,400 evaluations, and the ability to create practice material and share it publicly.  ev360 Professional contains the largest library of practice material for court reporting students and professionals.

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CCR is very proud to announce that ev360 Infinity 2.0 has officially launched. In 2.0, you can mark your dictation materials, record audio OR video dictation, and upload it directly into the learning management system. No additional audio or video recording software is necessary. Just accept the Java plugin certificate and you are on you way. The first of it kind for court reporting skill development. Next week we begin recording our multi-voice classes. Who has the best technology? This is exciting stuff.

 

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We are typically led to believe that being “nervous” is a bad thing. Indeed, most of the advice I’ve ever heard has been aimed at reducing anxiety. Over the years, I tried everything I could to get rid of the unpleasant feelings associated with performance anxiety. I tried eating bananas, drinking chamomile tea, imagining the audience in their underwear, sleep deprivation, practicing more, taking various supplements, and even trying to convince myself that it didn’t matter how I played. None of this, of course, took the anxiety away or did much to help me perform any better.

The big question, of course, is how do you transform anxiety from a liability to an advantage? Before we talk about this, we first need to understand some basics about what happens to our mind under stress.

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College of Court Reporting (CCR) is pleased to announce that we will be exhibiting at the NCRA 2012 Annual Convention and Exposition August 9th – 12th in Philadelphia.  More than 1,800 court reporters, broadcast captioners, CART providers, webcasters, Internet information reporters, students, instructors, and scopists will attend the convention.

Janet Noel, Faculty Development Coordinator; Nicky Rodriquez, Director of Admissions; Natalie Kijurna, Graduate and Employer Relations Coordinator; Lisa Morton, Director of Financial Aid; Tim Moody, Instructor and Moody Method Theory Specialist; and Nick Trottier, Admissions Coordinator will represent CCR at the vendor exposition. We are pleased to announce that we will be demonstrating our ev360 Academic and ev360 Professional technologies. The ev360 suite of products were developed by the minds of some of the country's top court reporting educators and have played a vital role for users in enhancing skill and speed development, increasing progression rates, perfecting realtime skills, and passing certification skills exams. For those who participate in an ev360 Professional demonstration, we will be offering a free ev360 Professional T-shirt and a chance to win 5 Ben Franklins -- yes, $500.

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Confidently, we can say that court reporting--having a human court reporter preserve the spoken word in a courtroom, classroom, or elsewhere--is in fact a thriving field.  Yes, technology has made incredible advances in speech to text technology, but there are still no signs of an electronic device that can perform every necessary task that a human reporter can. There are a few prime reasons that we cite for the necessity of court reporters.

First, if you have ever been in a crowded area like an airport, mall, or bus station, you know that it is impossible to hear and comprehend everyone's conversations all at once.  However, the human ear accomplishes a feat that no machine is yet capable of.  You have the ability to home in on just one conversation out of the entire crowd.  Your magnificient ears can pick out one voice out of hundreds.  In court or a classroom, there are many times when multiple speakers will attempt to speak at one time.  Court reporters are able to distinguish between voices and even request that the speakers proceed one at a time.  This is one advantage over electronic recording devices.

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I would like to expand a little on the "learning opportunity" approach to testing/evaluation, as I strongly believe that every evaluation (SAP or SE) must be an opportunity to learn what your weaknesses are in your writing AND transcription. I would like to write specifically about how every SAP CAN become a learning opportunity. I like to call it the "Four-Step Process" of taking an SAP. If you omit any one step, the learning cannot occur.

Step 1: Listen to the audio of the SAP entirely from beginning to end. So often I learn that students will hesitate during an SAP and choose not to write the SAP all the way to the end because they know they did not get it. "Getting" an SAP should not be the objective, as this is a pass/fail approach. Progressing on one's percentage of transcription accuracy from one SAP to the next should always be the objective—progressing, progressing, progressing.

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My Scottish friend is endlessly annoyed by the liberties Americans take with the English language. He claims we are always adding prefixes and suffixes to words that have no business being added. We are forever using our American brashness and independence to sully his language. I thought of him when I came across Norman Vincent Peale’s made-up word of possibilitarian. Now, this word cannot be found in any dictionary, but we all know what it means. It brings forth thoughts of optimism, enthusiasm, and a belief in the impossible. It’s an empowering word even if it is made up. Just being able to say the seven-syllable word feels empowering!

Norman Vincent Peale, an American, of course, and author of Power of Positive Thinking, offered us this gem of a word in a quote that speaks perfectly to court reporting students (“Norman Vincent Peale”). “Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities—always see them, for they’re always there” (“Become a Possibilitarian”). Notice he didn’t say “Become an impossibilitarian,” or “See the impossibilities.” That would be an easy thing to do considering that traditional court reporting schools have an attrition rate of 85 to 90 percent (“Court Reporting Schools”). However, as a court reporting student, I have learned to ignore trifles like that and instead have learned to see the possibilities in my future career, in the next week or month, and even in my failures.

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In a reverent homage to David Letterman, I offer up my Top Ten Steps to Steno Success.

Number 10: Just keep trying.
It's regular and steady effort that wins the steno race. Identify the weaknesses in your writing, and then work to conquer them. Have a daily plan that moves you one day closer to completing your training or meeting your steno goal. Remember that Mount Everest is climbed one step at a time. Make and keep a balanced practice plan. Work it! Even the best of plans will go awry. If you have a "bad day," then jump right back in the very next day. Hold yourself accountable for your progress.

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My time at the College of Court Reporting in Hobart, Indiana, ends at the Anoka County Courthouse in Anoka, Minnesota; seems strange. I came to Anoka County in March to start my first experience following an official reporter. One of my instructors, Janet Noel, set me up with a dear friend of hers who just happens to work there.

Honestly, it seems like I have waited forever for this opportunity. And now that it is here, I just want to turn my car around and drive back home to the comfort of my own home and announce that I have changed my mind, that I have decided a career in accounting would suit me better.

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Tales from the Internship

By: Carmen James - CCR High Speed Steno Student

 

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  • Carmen James photo1

    Tales from the Internship

    By: Carmen James - CCR High Speed Steno Student     Hello CCR family. I had an amazing opportunity during my internship that I would love to share with all of you.   On August 29th through the 31st I got to sit in on a ve ...

    by Natalie Kijurna
    Wednesday, 15 November 2023
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