The 2017 NCRA Convention and Expo in Las Vegas is drawing near, which has me reflecting upon past conventions and the knowledge base I gained from them. The Rocketbook was introduced to me by an awesome court reporter colleague, Lisa Knight, and it has proven to be a valuable productivity tool for me lately.
As a freelance court reporter in Memphis, Tennessee, depositions, sworn statements, hearings, and court trials are just a few of the proceedings that my clients need me to take the verbatim proceedings down. For each job I create a job sheet, as most court reporters do I imagine. That job sheet is our bible for each deposition or other verbatim proceedings we need to transcribe at a future date. The job sheets include things like the date, start time, location, attorneys present, witness name, and case caption. Of course I also include any exhibits I marked and any spellings that I asked the witness or client for as well.
In the past, I used a legal pad for my job sheets and, then, filed them away in a storage cabinet. With the Rocketbook, the need for all that paper is a thing of the past! Utilizing the Rocketbook saves me time, boosts my productivity, organization, and gives me flexibility in how I work on the go.
As a busy freelance court reporter, I do travel to different cities across the county when my clients need me. When I do have the occasion to travel, go on vacation, or if I go spend time with my children, of course I take advantage of downtime to work on editing transcripts. Because my job sheets are now digitized, there’s no need to carry the hard-copy job sheets when I’m away from my office.
What is Rocketbook? According to their website:
The Rocketbook Wave provides the freedom of a traditional pen and paper notebook, while instantly blasting your notes into the cloud using your smartphone.
When you use Pilot FriXion pens with the Wave notebook, you can erase your notes using your microwave oven and reuse your notebook. Available in 2 sizes – each book comes with one pen.
There are many cool features of the Rocketbook:
- The QR code on the bottom of each page ensures that your pages are always in chronological order.
- The image processing is crisp and clean — maybe even better than the original!
- The symbols on the bottom of each page lets you send your job sheets to the location you designate within the app: Evernote, box, email, Dropbox, Google Drive, the Cloud, OneNote, Slack.
- Works with Pilot FriXion pens only. The pens come in in different colors and different tip styles. Choose one that matches your personality!
- The iOS app is always in Airplane Mode, which means if you’re like me you can edit on the go on your airplane travels too! (As of July 2017, Rocketbook’s blog advises that a new and updated iOS app is coming soon.)
- You may erase and reuse your Rocketbook five times.
- Use your microwave to erase and reuse. You do need a turntable in your microwave. If you have a model like mine with no turntable, just purchase a Nordic Ware Microwave Micro-Go-Round 10 inch for the workaround.
How does one use the Rocketbook?
- Purchase the Rocketbook and Pilot FriXion of your choice. I have the Wave and love it! Check out my Gadgets page for a link to purchase on Amazon.
- Set up the smartphone app by connecting your email, Evernote, box, Dropbox applications to match the symbols on the bottom of each page.
- Start creating your job sheet on the first page of your notebook as you normally would.
- After the job and you return to the office, use the smartphone app to scan your page. Place an X on the particular symbol at the bottom of the page in which you wish to store your job sheet.
- Next, select Scan within the app and place your smartphone on top of your page within the grid lines. Wait for the app to auto-focus and the app will automatically take a pic.
- Now tap on the scan of the page and it will become larger. At the bottom of the scan, you will see the symbol that you selected earlier is green.
- Tap on the green symbol and all your connected cloud accounts and connected email will display.
- You may choose at this time to select all of your connected accounts if you wish by tapping next to each option.
- Then select Sync All.
- The next screen allows you the option to give your job sheet a special file name before it syncs. Do so now.
- Finally, tap Send and you’re done!
I would love to hear if anyone else is using this digital notebook and your experiences with it. This is so easy to use. All you need to do is CREATE, SCAN, and ERASE!
Technology is great!