'Witchcraft': NAIT student making stenography cool with social media videos

Edmonton — Videos of a NAIT student reporting about what she’s learning in her court reporter classes are turning her into a social media sensation. Isabelle Lumsden’s videos about stenography have been seen over 2.5 million times on TikTok.

“It’s been crazy,” she says.

Lumsden, who is taking the closed captioning and court reporting program at NAIT, felt it would be fun to show off her budding stenography skills.

“I thought people might find this interesting it’s unique and unusual and so I decided to post about it on TikTok,” said Lumsden.

And the response to her videos has been a big surprise to her. She has had people from all over the world connect with her to find out more about stenography. It’s a skill that allows her to type 225 words per minutes using a special keyboard and a form of shorthand that a lot of people have trouble understanding.

“People were commenting that this is witchcraft,” she said with a laugh.

Lumsden feels her videos are also magically breaking stenographer stereotypes.

“People pictured, and no offense to other stenographers, old ladies working in court rooms. So I’m kind of making it more trendy, and maybe a little bit more modern in people’s minds.”

And Lumsden says hopes her videos will have more young people keying into the profession of stenography, which she thinks is not going to become obsolete with new technology.

“I’m not scared of it disappearing any time soon there are so many things that stenographers can do that voice recognition cannot do,” she said.

You can check out her videos on TikTok under the username @isabellelumsden.