Ulearn

24th April 2026

Cheery Friday Greetings from Barb Oakley!

Turn YouTube Bingeing into YouTube Learning

We all watch YouTube videos to learn things — but how much do we actually retain? A talented young developer has built a free tool called Ulearn that solves this problem beautifully. It’s a Chrome extension that automatically generates quiz questions after you watch a YouTube video, then tracks what you’ve learned using a spaced repetition system (the same science-backed approach used by medical students to master enormous amounts of material). I’ve been playing with it myself and find the questions surprisingly thoughtful — and I love that it gives me a way to actually track the educational videos I’m watching instead of just letting them vanish into the ether. You can also paste in notes or text from any source and generate AI-graded flashcards. The spaced repetition system uses an irresistible owl-themed progression from “Hatchling” to “Elder Owl.” The first 50 users get $3 in free credit, and you can check it out at https://ulearnai.org or grab the Chrome extension directly from the Chrome Web Store.

Come to Cambridge, England, This July!

The Cambridge Schools Conference is happening July 15-16 at the brand-new Ray Dolby Centre at the University of Cambridge, and I am thrilled to be giving both the opening keynote and a breakout session. My keynote, “Building Brains for the Future: The Neuroscience School Leaders Need Now,” digs into the paradox at the heart of modern education—how well-intentioned approaches like AI-assisted learning and activity-heavy teaching can actually undermine the deep practice students need. I will be drawing on dramatic case studies from Taiwan, New Zealand, and Singapore. My breakout session gets hands-on with practical tools teachers can use right away—from the power of metaphor to new research on how the brain suddenly “gets it” after what seems like a learning plateau. Early-bird registration (through April 30) is £450/€520/$610. Details and booking at https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/support-and-training-for-schools/events/in-person-events/july-2026/.

Building Minds in the Age of AI—Gothenburg, November 19-20

I will be speaking at “The Human Rise,” an intimate two-day conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, exploring how to learn and grow in the age of AI. My talk, “Building Minds in the Age of AI: Why Smarter Technology Is Making Us Dumber,” gets into a paradox that does not get nearly enough attention—in an era when AI can instantly supply any answer, the knowledge students carry in their own heads matters more than ever. I will be drawing on the latest neuroscience of how expertise is built, the striking reversal of the Flynn Effect (yes, IQ scores have been falling in precisely the countries that embraced the most technology-friendly educational reforms), and what AI research on “grokking” can teach us about our own brains. My colleague Olav Schewe will also be speaking on the “activity trap” in modern training. Only 65 seats, and early-bird pricing runs through August 15. Details at https://www.euro-academy.com/the-human-rise. 

From Vilnius with Love

I was recently interviewed by Tadas Valančius for Verslo Klasė, Lithuania’s leading business magazine. We talked early in the morning — him in Vilnius, me on the U.S. East Coast — about why learning is essentially an antidepressant, how mathematics education makes people smarter (not the other way around), why memory still matters in the age of AI, and how Taiwan’s investment in education has become a form of national defense. I was tickled to learn that the interview became the most-read article on the Verslo Žinios website. The piece is in Lithuanian and behind a paywall, but if you are curious, your browser’s auto-translate feature will do a decent job with it: https://www.vz.lt/verslo-klase/2026/03/23/mokslininke-b-oakley-gyvenimas-is-esmes-yra-tai-ka-pats-is-jo-padarai-582381

Little-Known Tip: Never Miss a Cheery Friday Again!

Did you know you can get my updates automatically — even if Coursera ghosts you? Turns out, my website has a built-in RSS feed — kind of like an old-school subscription tool that delivers new content directly to you. (Thank you to Alex, the tech-whiz reader, who pointed this out!) Here’s how to use it:
 Just copy and paste this link into your favorite RSS reader app (a good one is https://feedly.com, just choose the free “News Reader” option): https://www.barbaraoakley.com/feed

Not sure what an RSS feed is? It’s like subscribing to a personalized newspaper — minus the paper cuts and spam filters.

Even easier is to simply paste https://www.barbaraoakley.com/feed into https://blogtrottr.com/ to get automatic email updates. (Although they’ll collect your email and perhaps insert an advertisement in their email.)

When AI Lifts All the Weights, What Happens to the Muscle?

Kokuag Bublo heads economics, cross-asset, and quant research at Société Générale, and his podcast, 2050 Investors, is aimed at people thinking about where markets and technology are heading over the next quarter century. What happens to cognitive fitness when AI does the heavy lifting? Is neuroplasticity a real biological resource for a 47-year-old, or just motivational jargon? We ended up talking about my daughter’s decade of Kumon, the Neuralink horizon, and why the gym analogy for the brain is more literal than most people realize.

That’s all for now. Happy learning!

Barb Oakley

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