ABOUT me, Sherry McMahan,
& about Stepping Stones to Dragon
& about being Hands-Free
with Dragon in the Workplace
First, I am a Hands-Free Dragon User.
Second, I Love to Teach What I Know.
Hi, I'm Sherry McMahan and these are the Stepping Stones that got me here!
I had to become "good" with Dragon because I have had arthritis since I was in high school... primarily I needed to be a Hands-Free user. ✨My first attempts with voice-to-text were as a beta-tester for IBM in the DOS arena in 1989... like any 1st step, the IBM program was unsteady to say the best of it. ✨...But from then on, I bought every software product I could find that came out for voice-to-text... until 2006 when Dragon, version 9 came on the market. ...Finally, it really worked! I figured my need for a Keyboard was reaching the end. Plus I could really control the Mouse for the first time, by Voice! I started teaching my computer clients, who were primarily business owners, attorneys, medical staff & CPA's because they thought it was worth the investment of their time and money to learn this new tool! They had the Need for Efficiency! ✨In 2007, while I was doing volunteer computer instruction at the Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, a Vocational Rehabilitation counselor saw me. She asked me if I would be willing to sign up as a vendor for the State of Nevada and teach some of her clients. ✨2009 I started being called on by Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling firms that dealt with injured workers and personal injury clients. ✨2011 one of the counselors from Nevada Department of Vocational Rehabilitation asked me if I could teach a client that had zero use of his hands. ...I said “Sure!” And promptly started working my buns off to learn to be “Hands-Free”. At that time the Dragon software power was growing. I moved from Dragon being just one of the computer skills instructions I offered, to Dragon becoming my primary service... just because I love what it does for any of us! ✨By 2012 clients from the vocational schools and VA were seeing the value of Dragon instruction. That year, to help people understand misconceptions of Dragon, I wrote... “Dragon NaturallySpeaking - Star Trek or Precocious Two Year Old Brat”. {be forewarned the "links" in that article are out of date...} ✨I started learning how to move my Dragon training services to online, to serve more than one student at a time... to expand services out beyond Las Vegas. I love it when people realize that they don’t have to go home hurting at the end of the day because they been chained to their computer. ✨Now they can work standing up ✨They can lay back and close their eyes while they dictate. ✨They can stretch ✨Some people even pace and think and keep dictating. Most of my students complete their fourth week typing more than 70 words per minute. Their only limitation is the speed of clear speech they are working from as their base. ✨My personal maximum speed is about 104 to 107 words per minute, when I know what I want to say. Typing by hand or by voice we also have to consider thinking our subject through. For me, 110 wpm is my maximum speaking speed. I had a paralegal from New York that hit 203 words per minute... I can’t think that fast... I love it when people can excel. I love working with people to reach the level where they can excel! …and they can achieve their goals in the workplace! Sheryll "Sherry" McMahan www.SherryMcMahan.com |