The Best Back-to-School Inventions

As August reaches its end, the creeping feeling of summer vacation comes back around as it’s finally back to school season. For some this may seem daunting, but looking on the positive side of things, every upcoming back to school season means its time to get back to getting things done!

In the spirit of getting into the mood for productivity and accomplishing goals, we’ve compiled a list of products that inspire you to get ready to get back to focusing and work. Sometimes, the right product is all you need to motivate you into doing something that might seem daunting.

Below we’ve listed some of the best back to school inventions that will help get you ready for the upcoming school year!

The Back-to-School Invention Everyone Needs

In today’s age of technology, it seems as if almost every product has become or turned into a ‘smart’ object, and this is no different for stationary. The Livescribe Smartpen is the best back-to-school invention that can save your life in any class.

This pen features a microphone, camera, speaker and storage that captures every moment of usage. The camera within the pen captures every moment that is used with the pen, capturing all your notes or doodles and familiarizing itself with your handwriting.

Thus, with the pens built in micro-phone and speaker, the pen can digitize your notes, record audio and play everything back for you. Once you connect your pen with the linked Echo app, you can see all your notes synced onto a computer, making it easier to share, store and organize your notes.

The Smart Notebook

One of the biggest problems with notebooks is that a lot of people usually throw them out once they’re finished with them. Even worse, some people opt to throw out the whole page of paper if they make a mistake, wasting paper!

To solve this, The Rocketbook is a back to school invention that makes note taking a breeze and more convenient for a busy school day. The notebook looks and feels like a regular notebook, except that once you’re done writing what you need, simply take a picture to scan your note onto your phone, and the Rocketbooks linked app will create a digitized and cleaner image of your note.

Once you’re done, simply wipe down your page to reuse!

The Quintessential Backpack

If you’re entering or already in post-secondary schooling, you already know how important it is to have a laptop. Your laptop will carry all your notes, essays, assignments and access to a lot of online resources available to you during your school career. For this reason, your laptop is extremely valuable and should be kept safe with you at all times.

However, it isn’t uncommon that a lot of students find their laptops stolen! To help solve this problem, XDDesign created a great back to school invention, a anti-theft backpack! The backpack features a cut-proof design with no front access, hidden pockets and zippers! This concealed design makes it difficult for anyone to steal or grab anything from your backpack, making sure that all your belongings are safe.

Additionally, the backpack comes with an integrated USB port perfect for keepings your phone charged at all times, and three innovative ways to opening your bag without the fear of having your contents spill out and break.

This Back-to-School Invention Will Help Digitize Your Notes

Another smart pen on the market is the Neo Smartpen M1. Unlike the previously mentioned Livescribe Smartpen, this smart pen markets itself as one of the thinnest and lightest smart pens available, giving it a smoother experience to write with.

Linked with a app, anything the user uses the pen the jot down any notes, the pen tracks the handwriting of the user and syncs it to the app, showing you a real live tracking of your handwriting! The pen can detect the user switching between notebooks, and if you need to change the colour of your notes, you can easily do so on the app.

What makes this back-to-school invention so unique and powerful is that the smart pen can transcribe languages and give you a recording of all that you’ve written down. The app also makes it easy to search for anything you’ve written down, saving you time from having to relentlessly flip through countless notebooks.

Interested in discovering more of the best back-to-school inventions? Check out our past blog here!

If you have a great new invention and you’d like to learn more about this process, get in touch with MAKO today and visit our website to find out more. Or feel free to give us a call at 1-888-MAKO, and we can set you up on a call with our product strategist!

About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!