Glean

Glean is a purposeful, visionary company, driven to make the biggest impact on the world that it can. For over 14 years, Glean has been advocating for a new approach to note taking, one which tackles fundamental challenges and inequalities in the way that we teach and learn. From its inception, Glean has always questioned standard assumptions in general education practice; that written language is more acceptable than spoken, that having notes is as important as the process of taking notes and that education technology should focus on improving teaching practices rather than empowering better learners.

Glean is a tool that levels the playing field for students with disabilities who make up around 11% of the college student population. Glean eliminates all of the problems previously mentioned, there’s no recruitment or delivery of notes required, and human error is significantly reduced. But most importantly, dependence is replaced with independence. Independence for people with disabilities is incredibly important both in education and employment.

By using Glean, students can capture everything from their lectures themselves. The anxiety many feel if they miss important information while taking notes is gone. Once a student hears something they think might be important, or that they’ll want to remember, they label this moment with a reaction icon. This creates a bookmark for them to come back to later, making revisiting recordings much easier, and personal to each student. Students come back to their labelled recording and add detail in text notes and presentation slides for structure. Soon, they’ll have a full set of unique notes, with audio, imagery and text. When test time approaches, students have a multimedia workspace with everything they need to revisit and absorb lecture content meaning there is no need to rely on others to aid this process.