Publisher Electronic Arts has announced that it intends to bring the bestselling educational card deck series Brain Quest to the Nintendo DS, by way of its EA Casual Entertainment development studio.

Adapting the curriculum-based card game model to a digital format, Brain Quest will debut in the form of two separate editions: one for grades three and four, and another for grades five and six. The games feature fast-paced quiz games on a variety of subjects as well as a story-driven quest mode.

The games mark the first educational game out of EA's Casual Entertainment label, created by the publisher last year. Both Brain Quest titles will hit retailers this coming September.

Sony Computer Entertainment has kicked off PlayStation-edu, a new program giving college and university computer science departments access PlayStation 2 and PSP development kits.

The program is aimed to teach computer science and engineering students about PlayStation platforms using the same development kits deployed by developers and publishers, typically unavailable to the general public.

"SCEA wants to make sure that students who are graduating from college are ready to program on PlayStation hardware and that means getting it into your hands," wrote SCEA developer support manager Mark Danks on the PlayStation Blog.

Participating schools are required to sign unspecified legal agreements with Sony, as well as purchase the development kits themselves. Though Danks did not disclose pricing for the units, they are known to be quite costly—a PlayStation 3... Read more

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her involvement in the development of an educational online civics game for middle school students called Our Courts, Game|Life reported today.

O'Connor, who made the announcement as part of the closing keynote address at this year's Games For Change conference, will be collaborating with University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Paul Gee and other educators to create the game. Our Courts is expected to arrive in September of 2009.

The retired justice explained that American students aren't learning enough about civics and government, and that games could prove a useful tool to strengthen civics education. Early exercises in the game, for example, will use recent Supreme Court hearings to educate students about their First Amendment rights.

"E-mailing, blogging, networking on Facebook—they can take leadership, make their voices heard through tools that belong to their generation. We need ... Read more

Educational software company Tabula Digita announced that three concurrent sessions at this week's Florida Educational Technology Conference will be dedicated to the use of games as educational tools. The conference kicks off in Orlando, Florida today and runs through the 25th.

"While it's an interesting contradiction that fun and exciting games are being discussed in an esteemed academic forum, it nonetheless proves that educational gaming is a serious tool for helping today's technology-savvy students," said Tabula Digita co-founder Ntiedo Etuk.

Etuk will speak on "Leading Digital Immigrants to Teach Math to the Video Game Generation" on January 25, which explores the gaming medium and demonstrates how it can help teachers reach students and engage them in mathematics.

Another session, entitled "Using Educational Games to Develop Student's Content Knowledge," will highlight instructional strategies associated with gaming. "Why Game Development Matters" focuses on the educational benefits of prompting students to develop their own video games.