Over 250 digital media, entertainment, and learning experts and industry professionals are set to converge on San Francisco next week for the Digital Kids Summit and Digital Kids Education (Edu) Day taking place Wednesday, September 18th, and Thursday, September 19th, at the San Francisco Children’s Creativity Museum. The summits are spin-offs of Engage Digital's New York-based Digital Kids Conference.

Quick and Dirty Tips has released a new game for the iPad that promises to help users improve their grammar. The game is called Grammar Pop, and it is the brainchild of Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl podcast host and New York Times best-selling author. Fogarty helped develop and test the game using the Game Salad authoring tool.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) announced a partnership with the Black Association for Science and Engineering, the Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF), HHF's Leaders on the Fast Track (LOFT) and other groups to create the ESA Loft Video Game Innovation Fellowship.

The Kansas Supreme Court and Kansas Bar Association announced support for promoting the use of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's educational video games in schools to teach students lessons about civics. Both the court and the association for lawyers in the state are advocating for the use of O'Connor's iCivics to teach children how various branches of government work.

Jennifer Ann’s Group has released the third-place winning video game from the 2013 Life. Love. Game Design Challenge. The 2013 Life. Love. Game Design Challenge asked developers to create games that raised awareness about the dangers of Teen dating violence. Jennifer Ann's Group is a charity dedicated to the cause and named after Jennifer Ann Crecente, who was murdered by an ex-boyfriend.

NIS America has added some new characters to its educational iOS puzzle game, Character Chowdown. The in-game content, which will cost you roughly $0.99 a pop, includes characters from the popular Disgaea series such as Laharl, Prinny, Mao, and Flonne. Other downloadable content includes the Hiragana pack and seven different Kanji packs.

A Kickstarter campaign has launched for TJ's World, an interactive educational program described by its creators as "Mobile Kindergarten." TJ's World offers a cross platform, cloud based, "learn as you play" preschool and kindergarten in one application.

Game developer 1st Playable Productions is the first video game-related company in the United States to receive "B Corporation" (B Corp) certification, the company announced today. B Corporation status is a standard that measures the social impact of a company on the environment and the community it does business in. It is also the first company in NY’s Tech Valley (the company is located in Troy, NY) to receive the distinction as well. B Corporation certification comes from the non-profit B Lab.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe announced today that educators and academics can apply for PlayStation 4 development kits beginning tomorrow as part of the PlayStationFirst Academic Programme. The PS4 joins other kits made available to educators and academics including those for PlayStation 3, PS Vita, PlayStation Portable - as well as kits for PlayStation Home and PlayStation Mobile. These Academic development kits include access to PlayStation software and hardware, lessons in programming, computer engineering, and developing software.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media today revealed the names of 16 middle school and high school students as the winners of the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. The competition was designed to motivate interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) among students in grades 5-12 using video games as the creative medium of choice. The top original video games and game design concepts were chosen from 14 categories and nearly 4000 entries.

The University of California, Davis announced grants for vocational education, child poverty, international migration and the cultural impact of video games. All of these topics are part of the Interdisciplinary Frontiers in Humanities and Arts program, which will receive combined funding of $3.6 million over three years. The goal is to kick start new research that can go on to compete for funding from "external sources." The funding comes from indirect costs of grants awarded to UC Davis under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or stimulus funds.

Games for Change has announced that the game concept Safe Sex with Friends is the winner of the 2013 SEXETC.ORG Game Design Competition. The three finalists were Safe Sex with Friends, SexEd Super Task Force, and Check/Mate. After hearing presentations from all three finalists (during the 10th Annual Games for Change Festival) and thoughtful deliberation by jurors (Matt Parker, Lana Dakan, Lucinda Holt, and Naomi Clark,) Safe Sex with Friends was selected as the winning game.

ReasonTV has an interesting interview with Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, who continues to evangelize the use of video game-like components as a means to enhance the public educational system through his new company Brain Rush. Bushnell is also known as the founder of the Chuck E Cheese chain of restraints, the author of the new book "Finding the Next Steve Jobs," and is often referred to as the "Father of Video Games."

Filmmaker Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, who is best known for her documentary ("Wonder Women! The Untold Stories of American Superheroines") about strong women throughout history and championing  the empowerment of women, has made a new game called Wonder City.

Organizers of the 10th annual Games for Change Festival sent along a reminder that next week the annual event dedicated to games will officially launch. This year the Games For Change Festival will take place at New World Stages in NYC from June 17-19.

The U.S. Department of Education announced the winners of this year's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract awards. The SBIR funds are earmarked for small businesses using "cutting-edge R&D" to develop technologies to solve tough problems. Half of those contracts are game-related in some way - either they are for games or use gaming technology in a creative way.

S.O.S. Gamers has launched a crowd-funding campaign for Get Schooled, an initiative that supplies underprivileged schools and community centers in the New York City area with access to educational technology including computers, calculators, and recreational items such as video game consoles and games.

Zynga.org, Zynga's non-profit dedicated to using social games to promote good, announced a partnership with NewSchools Venture Fund, a venture philanthropy that supports education entrepreneurs to transform public education. Together they will create a new "ed tech" accelerator focused on "enhancing the quality and reach of learning games and apps designed to improve education outcomes."

Four coding schools just for young girls and women are trying to change the number of females that program (and give girls more STEM-focused educational opportunities) in the United States - as highlighted in this ReadWriteWeb feature. The start-ups catering to women and girls aspiring to learn how to code include Girl Develop It, Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, and Girls Learning Code/Ladies Learning Code.

A new study published in the scientific journal Obesity finds that active games or exergaming are a good way for children to lose weight. The goal of the study, "Adolescent Exergame Play for Weight Loss and Psychosocial Improvement: A Controlled Physical Activity Intervention," was to find effective ways to encourage youngsters to be more physically active through video gaming. Researchers Sandra Calvert, Ph.D.

Video game industry pioneers and USC alumni Kevin Bachus and Chanel Summers have made a donation to the USC School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media & Games Division (IMGD) to help establish The Bachus-Summers Fund for Innovation in Interactive Entertainment. The donation was revealed today by School of Cinematic Arts’ (SCA) Dean Elizabeth M. Daley and will be used to create a fund for student support to be awarded to those who show initiative in the fields of interactive and immersive media.

Women in Games International (WIGI) and the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles (GSGLA) are now working together to create the first video game patch for Girl Scouts. Scouts can earn the patch by taking part in a special program put together by both the GSGLA and WIGIIGI using various tools to create a game.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) focused program iD Tech Camps today announced that it will be holding classes this summer that teach pre-teens between the ages of 10 - 12 how to design a first-person shooter game using Nadeo's recently-released ShootMania Storm.

CCP Games today revealed the line-up of speakers that will be a part of the "Make EVE Real" track at its (sold-out) annual fan celebration EVE Fanfest from April 25-27. Dr. Richard Obousy (President and Co-Founder of Icarus Interstellar) and Chris Lewicki (President of Planetary Resources) will join Michael Laine (President of LiftPort Group) in sharing their thoughts on how current science fiction may soon become a reality.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) has opened submissions for the 2013 Into the Pixel art exhibit and the 2013 Randy Pausch and Mark Beaumont Scholarships. The Into the Pixel art exhibit features digital game art from developers around the world. Submissions for that close on April 17, with those selected being on display in a special gallery at the E3 Expo on June 11-13, followed by worldwide tours thereafter.

The U.S. Department of State and marketing agency The SuperGroup have released a game that they hope will teach 12 - 16 year olds American culture and better English. The goal is to make learning about language fun. The browser-based game, which is available now online and on mobile phones, comes with support materials for teachers and was tested in non-English speaking countries like Peru, Columbia, and Indonesia.

Microsoft has launched the Kodu Game Design Challenge for young children, challenging youngsters to use its Kodu Labs game development package available for free on Windows (and for $5 on Xbox Live Indies) to develop a game. Children between the ages of nine and 18 years-old are eligible to compete.

The ESA Foundation, the charitable arm of the video game industry trade group the Entertainment Software Association, has announced that applications are now being accepted for its 2013-2014 scholarship program. This particular scholarship is for minorities and women that want to get a higher education in the interactive entertainment industry.

The first Raspberry Pi game jam was recently held in Manchester, according to Develop. Using the affordable computing devices, the event offered 336 teachers and educators who attended the basic skills needed to apply their knowledge and teach coding in the classroom.

The USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) announced today that it has changed the name of its Interactive Media Division to the Interactive Media and Games Division. The name change is to "emphasize the program’s commitment to studying games and playable media in all forms," according to Tracy Fullerton, Electronic Arts Endowed Chair of the Interactive Media and Games Division at SCA.