EdCircuit Staff 
The 2020 Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC), heading to Miami for the first time from January 14-17, will feature more than 600 learning opportunities for educators of all roles, as well as an Expo Hall with 400+ exhibiting companies featuring the latest technologies and newest products on the market. Rocketbook will be one of those exhibiting companies, heading to the FETC Expo for the first time to share its “notebooks from the future” that support modern learning in STEM classes and other subjects, as well.
In advance of the conference, we had the opportunity for a quick Q&A with Matt Duncan, Rocketbook’s Director of Education, who oversees the implementation of educational tools in classrooms across the United States and Canada. Matt and his team, committed to environmental sustainability in schools, have crafted methods of reducing paper consumption in classrooms by 80 percent. In this interview, he explains what his team hopes to share with educators at FETC, as well as what they look forward to learning from attendees.
Q: You’ve been working with businesses for a while, but you’re now putting effort into supporting educators with your products. In what ways do you think educators will benefit?
Matt Duncan: Educators face some of the biggest challenges imaginable. They’re doing everything possible so that every student can be successful in careers and jobs that don’t even exist yet. At Rocketbook, we dream about seamless collaboration and communication, and our smart notebooks allow all students to remain focused on mission-critical tasks while remaining cloud-connected for instant feedback.
Q: FETC brings together administrators, educators, and tech professionals from all roles. What are you hoping to share with the participants at the conference?
MD: Our notebooks are endlessly reusable and integrate with Google Classroom. We even automatically translate handwritten notes into text that can be blasted off in an email, text message, Dropbox, and Google Doc. How space age is that? Because our notebooks are reusable, we also decrease classroom paper consumption by up to 80%, driving down costs for schools, lowering the number of trees cut for paper products, and reducing waste in your landfill.
We also just released a new tool, Beacons, that transforms a normal whiteboard into a smartboard. Educators simply place the Beacons at the corners of a whiteboard and can share notes to the same cloud services as our smart notebooks using our Rocketbook App. You can even live stream the content of your whiteboard to a unique URL, allowing people to view your whiteboard notes no matter where they are.
Q: Taking another look at the benefits of attending FETC, what are you hoping to learn from attending?
MD: The increased use of technology has aided education in countless areas, but we think there are some challenges faced by educators that we can help with. This leads us to some interesting questions. What are some methods that you use to keep your students engaged and attentive when integrating technology? How are you tying these new tools into your existing lesson plans? What types of professional development sessions have you experienced that were fun and also really helpful?
At Rocketbook, we try to anticipate hurdles faced by our educators and develop meaningful tools to accomplish each classroom goal. Above all, the insight from educators is nothing short of out of this world, so we’d love for attendees at FETC to come by and see what we’re working on, tell us how they use Rocketbook, and share ideas on how they would like to see Rocketbook support the classrooms of tomorrow.
Q: As you look at the needs of people in the 21st century, what are the skills you try to support, and the needs you look to address?
MD: Students today are facing new and unique challenges that, in many ways, generations before never encountered; and as digital natives, technology pervades every aspect of their lives. At Rocketbook, our goal is not only to support the technological needs of students, but also generate new opportunities for collaboration and creativity. Our notebooks directly support 21st-century skills by being adaptable to every subject area in nearly every grade level, and by supporting these skills, students can use Rocketbook explore and create like never before.
The 40th anniversary Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC) will take place January 14-17, 2020 in Miami, Fla. Registration is now open at Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC)
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