UK-based film studio Pinewood is working towards launching a new school that teaches students about the creation and production of video games, according to Develop.

Ball State University (in Muncie, Indiana) professor Ronald Morris and computer science professor Paul Gestwicki have teamed up with graduate students to create a Unity-based game that teaches fourth grade students about the Underground Railroad (thanks to Polygon). The game is called The Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley River and puts students in the shoes of a runaway slave who must make his or her way to Canada where they can live a free life.

Around 180 students are taking part in a Minecraft based experiment at the Viktor Rydberg school in Stockholm, Sweden - according to GameSpot. The school has introduced "compulsory Minecraft lessons" for its 13-year-old students as a means to teach them - in an engaging way - about planning for the future and environmental issues.

Konami announced that it has teamed up with UnitedHealthcare for a joint initiative that will use its popular dance rhythm game DanceDanceRevolution in schools to fight childhood obesity. The initiative will create a special version of DanceDanceRevolution called the DDR Classroom Edition.

Game developer Brenda Romero has been named the first "game designer in residence" at UC Santa Cruz. Mrs. Romero joins the UCSC's Center for Games and Playable Media to teach courses and work with students, faculty, and researchers on all things related to video game design. Mrs.

On December 29 The Pixel Academy will set up shop in the ArtsCetera on 212 Smith Street in Brooklyn to create a 21st century digital media lab for kids. Open house ALL DAY (10am-8pm) - Instructors will be teaching classes on a range of creative technologies and answering questions about Pixel Academy and their educational programs.

BVM Capital announced that it has made a seed round investment in health and fitness gaming company Fitness Interactive Experience (FIX). FIX is dedicated to making fitness and health fun, accessible and socially connected using massively multiplayer online games.

Pixel Academy, a New York City-based company founded by former Lead Game Designer at Nickelodeon (Mike Fischtha) has been conducting workshops for children ages 8-12 all over the city at locations such as homes and public libraries. These workshops teach children video game design, 3D printing, Arduino fashion design, and other fun technology based courses.

BerryBots 1.0.0 has been released for Raspberry Pi, Linux, and Mac OS X - with a Windows version "coming soon." Developed by Patrick Cupka (who some of you may remember from the Quake community as the sole proprietor of the popular web site The Void), BerryBots is described as a game designed primarily for the Raspberry Pi that teaches players the basics of programming. The game caters to novice programmers by letting them program a ship that moves around a simple stage, sees gameplay events, and shoots at other ships.

The University of Southern California will officially launch Mission: Admission Oct. 29 on Facebook. The free Facebook game is designed to help high school students in underserved communities learn the process of applying for college and financial aid in a fun and engaging way.

Rice University in Houston, Texas is using Bethesda's hit role-playing game Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim to help teach an English course about Scandinavian fantasy worlds. The course is called "Scandanavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim" and hopes to teach students about fantasy as a psychological concept and how it is important in gaming culture. Students will play certain quests within the game, read selections from Norse and Icelandic sagas and identify parallels between literature and the game.

The state of Minnesota apparently doesn't like free online education that could benefit its citizens. The state has decided to tell California-based online education startup Coursera that it is not allowed to offer its online courses to the state’s residents without first getting permission from the state and paying a registration fee. Coursera was founded by Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, and partners with top universities around the world to offer certain classes online for free to anyone who wants access to them.

The Entertainment Software Association Foundation (the charitable arm of the video game trade group the ESA) announced that it has awarded 30 would-be game developers scholarships for the 2012-2013 period. The ESA scholarships provide each recipient $3,000 that goes towards their education in fields such as 3D modeling, computer science, game art, animation, digital media, game design and visual effects.

Polygon offers a mildly interesting and inspirational story about how some favorite pastimes - soccer and video games - are being used to teach kids in the African nation of Rwanda about the importance of financial literacy. The game, Financial Football, is now in schools across the country and is being sponsored by the generosity of credit card giant Visa.

This Techland report details how a New York City school teacher named Joel Levin has created a version of Minecraft for schools called MinecraftEdu. Levin teaches second-grade computer classes at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York City. He also runs a Minecraft club for high school students and has been incorporating Minecraft into his classes for the past two years.

Minecraft developer Mojang has teamed up with the United Nations to create a new initiative called Block By Block.

Update: We have added a brief statement from Professor Douglas Gentile below.

Next week Iowa State University psychology professor Douglas Gentile will be at the White House to discuss how video games can be used to enhance and improve education. He will lead the discussion on a special policy conference to be held at the White House on Wednesday, August 22. The policy conference will examine how games can be used effectively in the broadest sense to improve health, education, civic engagement and the environment.

Games industry veteran Don Daglow thinks American gamers have trouble dealing with failure in games. He claims that this stems from the American education system where children are no longer taught to learn from the mistakes.

"The idea of failure has been dramatically reduced," he said, adding that American students don't "fail" anymore. Instead they are "challenged." Daglow thinks European developers should keep this in mind when trying to design games that they want to succeed in the American market.

Researchers at Yale are developing a video game for the iPad that hopes to prevent HIV infection among ethnic minority adolescents through the use of interactive entertainment. Their research is based on the entire process appears in Games for Health, a new journal focused on using game technology as a tool for improving health and well-being.

The Academy of Interactive Entertainment (Lafayette, Louisiana) will be hosting its annual Independent Game Developers Festival (iFest) at the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise(LITE) Center on Saturday August 4th (10am - 5pm).

Barring any technical glitches, the Mars rover Curiosity is scheduled to land on the planet Mars sometime this weekend, and with the help of Microsoft and your Xbox Live account, you'll be able to be a part of it.

Realizing that the current generation has been raised on video games and technology that is constantly evolving, University of California, Davis Professor Colin Milburn has found a novel way of reaching students: getting them to use creativity and technology to bring poetry and literature to life in 3D. Milburn, who is an associate professor of English, was recently appointed to the inaugural Gary Snyder Endowed Chair in Science and the Humanities at UC Davis. In this new position Davis is developing research and teaching techniques that are geared towards tech savvy youngsters.

A partnership between non-profits and the video game industry will bring gamification and education together through a new Games, Learning and Assessment (GLASS) Lab. This video game design lab will be housed in EA's Redwood, California headquarters, and will conduct research on how to better measure learning and to find new ways to get students more engaged in their education.

Valve has revealed Steam for Schools, a cool initiative that brings the joys of learning with Portal 2 to America's classrooms, at the Games For Change Festival. Steam For Schools, launching in a limited beta, will provide a limited Steam Client and a tailored version of Portal 2, along with the level editor and a workshop for hosting and organizing user-created levels. It will be free to teachers, who will have administrator access so that they can control what levels get shared.

The UK government has decided to take the rigid requirements out of information and communication technology (ICT) curriculum, instead allowing teachers to create their own lesson plans and approaches to providing students the things they need to learn. Teachers will still be required to teach ICT. The Department for Education’s consultation document announcing the change indicated that the mandatory guidelines were not getting the job done and that educators didn't care all that much for it.

The National Institute for Health is offering a grant to small indie game developers who are willing to partner with clinical neuroscientists to create game software that advances neuropsychotherapy and technologies that can be used to improve cognitive processes. While the grant only funds phase I and II research, but the goal is to quickly develop and commercialize successful studies.

Cogswell College passed along word that it is holding an Open House on Saturday, June 16, 2012 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm at its Sunnyvale, California campus. The Open House will allow those interested in the college to tour its campus and learn more about its animation, game design, audio production, audio engineering, game audio, digital arts engineering, computer engineering, software engineering and entrepreneurship & innovation bachelor degree programs it offers.

Ed Fleming, founder of the Main Campus Camps, let us know that he has launched a Kickstarter to provide some much needed funding to buy new technology for the summer video game design camp, along with some funding to give "in-need kids" free access to the program. Main Campus Camps hosts video game and science & technology summer day camps for children ages 5 - 16 years-old at Villanova University, just outside of Philadelphia.

The winners of the National STEM Video Game Challenge were announced today at The Atlantic's Technologies in Education Forum in Washington, DC. The competition was designed to motivate youngsters throughout the country to promote the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) by making video games.

UK video game industry trade group UKIE will sponsor the Games Britannia Festival, it announced today. Games Britannia is a week-long festival that brings British video game talent into the classroom, giving students a unique insight into the skills, techniques and qualifications required to have a successful career in the gaming industry. Over 1000 children, between the ages of 5 - 18 have already signed up to attend, according to UKIE. The event is scheduled to take place July 2 - 6.