Class Enrollment Application
Once you’ve completed the necessary steps for attending a class, please fill out the application form below.
Click the first section to get started with your application.
Once you’ve completed the necessary steps for attending a class, please fill out the application form below.
Click the first section to get started with your application.
It’s been just over a year now since we launched our new website here at LearnToCaption.com. A lot of strategy and thought went into building the site. From the graphics and content to the layout, tools, and navigation – we wanted this to be your “one-stop-shop” for all things related to reporting. Whether you’re a court reporter, broadcast captioner or CART captioner – our site has something to help you build your career and your dictionary!
If you’ve been following our Facebook page for Dictionary Jumpstart, you likely saw that we recently changed the name to LearnToCaption. As Communications Director for LearnToCaption, I felt like this was a good opportunity for me to post a good overview of our brands and services and WHY we decided to change the name of our page. I want to make sure there isn’t any confusion about WHAT we do and WHY, the services we provide, and WHO they are for!
LearnToCaption is what we lovingly refer to as our “umbrella” brand. This is our parent business. The big Kahuna, our main gig. Everything we do now and WILL do in the future (new things are in the works!) fall under the LearnToCaption brand. Now, that doesn’t mean that our focus is to just to serve captioners! Quite the contrary! Our approach as a training and education company stems from realtime writing and theory. It is our belief that this same concept captioners utilize should translate to ALL reporters. Court reporters can hugely benefit from learning to write realtime even if their goal isn’t to transition to captioning or CART captioning. Whether your writing is verbatim for the record or intended to serve the deaf and hard of hearing, realtime is your ticket to better writing overall and LearnToCaption is the place to get the ticket.
The ways to improve your realtime writing vary reporter by reporter and DJ is how it all began nearly two decades ago. Dictionary Jumpstart is the software tool Anissa developed at her kitchen table! It started as a small project to help a fellow captioner build her dictionary (so she could get on the air) and it grew into a complete, comprehensive dictionary-building program. Literally, thousands of hours of research and development have gone into Dictionary Jumpstart since the days of the kitchen table. It IS the fastest way to build your dictionary – you can enter up to 1,000 words in an hour with this software. DJ is the answer to cleaning up and enhancing your dictionary no matter what kind of reporting you do. Having words in your dictionary BEFORE you need them is key to better writing. It’s all about being prepared and DJ is the “how-to” tool.
Training and continuing education is the heart of what we do at LearnToCaption. This is our passion and purpose. Teaching reporters how to improve their realtime in one-on-one training, the LearnToCART, and Caption Masters courses are what we get most geeked about! When I see the enrollment forms come in through the website with the writing reviews, I just get so excited to see reporters taking the initiative. They are reaching out and saying, “It’s time.” Time to move their careers forward, time to stop writing the same untranslated words over and over again, time to make more money, time to stop spending so much time editing transcripts. Anissa has trained HUNDREDS of reporters in her classes. I call her the Realtime Doctor. 🙂 One-On-One training with her is just like going to the doctor. You’re sick, she can diagnose the problem, and give you the right medicine to cure it!
Anissa Captions is Anissa’s personal brand. As a captioner, her extensive personal experience with broadcast captioning, on-site and remote CART captioning are what gives her the street creds to provide services to companies looking for a rock star captioning partner. As the training and education division of LearnToCaption has grown over the last year, Anissa has had to be really choosy about what kinds of jobs she takes on now. She still captions regularly for the NBA and local news as well as several CART and on-site jobs, but the majority of her time is spent training reporters now. This has been a big shift for her, but she isn’t giving up captioning altogether anytime soon!
If you’ve ever heard Anissa speak at an event or training conference, the feeling you walk away with is truly inspiring! Anissa is a seasoned presenter and speaks all over the country at state association meetings, national conferences, and private training sessions.
If we’re being really honest here, most of us in this industry would say we need a little (Well, BIG) shake-up. With the number of reporters consistently dropping, and fewer students entering school, we’re experiencing a massive shortage. The prediction is that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. We need people like Anissa to bring some fresh ideas and concepts to our niche; to see training and writing with a different lens, to give us a new-found passion and excitement again for our careers!
There are four months out of the year that we will be running a 30-Day Dictionary Jumpstart Challenge – April, June, September, and November. It’s a private group on Facebook that DJ users can join that we started to help encourage them to USE their software! Each member will work on their DJ software for JUST 15 minutes a day during the Challenge! At the end of the 30 days, reporters will have up to 6,000 new words entered into their dictionaries! We provide support, encouragement and tips and tricks to working the software each day! Join us for the next Challenge that begins on April 1, 2018. As long as you have Dictionary Jumpstart, you’re eligible to join!
I’m definitely not a mind-reader and I can’t predict exactly where the reporting industry is going. We know that technology is getting better, but it still isn’t accurate enough to replace reporters. The demand is high and getting higher and there’s never been a better time to become a rock star reporter. Mad skills are what you need to set yourself apart and we’ve got the software and the training you need to get those mad skills here at LearnToCaption.
You know how to get in touch with us, right? We’re here for you and are your biggest fans! We’re cheering for you and want you to be successful. YOU are WHY we do what we do.
