Video games can make teens better citizens, according to Kathy Sanford, an education professor at the University of Victoria, (British Columbia, Canada) She comes to this conclusion after a five year research project that followed a group of teens between the ages of 13-17 years old. Sanford sat down with The Globe and Mail earlier this week to talk about her findings before presenting them at a UVic conference of humanities and social sciences.

First Lady Michelle Obama recently gave a commencement address at Bowie State University encouraging more young African Americans to continue their education. She does so by throwing culture like videogames, television, and music under the bus.

The Peter Thiel Foundation (founded by the former CEO and co-founder of PayPal) announced the third set of young entrepreneurs to be awarded 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowships. These new "Thiel Fellows" will receive $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation as well as mentorship from the Foundation’s network of entrepreneurs over a two year period.

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.

Gustavo Zacarias of San Antonio, Texas was one of the winners of the2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge who joined a select group of students that participated today in the third White House Science Fair, an event that emphasizes and celebrates student achievements in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions. The National STEM Video Game Challenge is an annual competition presented by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media.

Children and teens with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) use screen-based media, such as television and video games, more often than their typically developing peers and are more likely to develop problematic video game habits, according to research conducted by Micah Mazurek, an assistant professor of health psychology and a clinical child psychologist at the University of Missouri.

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.

Former CNN host Campbell Brown was a guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe program yesterday, where she suggested that President Barack Obama would have a better shot at passing gun control laws in the United States if he would stop singling out the Nation Rifle Association and put some of the focus on the violent content created by Hollywood and the video game industry.

Brown has written several op-ed pieces about the issue in publications like the Daily Beast and - most recently - the Wall Street Journal.

You can watch her appearance to below.

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.

Mojang is working on a new service called Minecraft Realms, which it hopes will give those players interested in subscribing their own special little corner of the Minecraft universe.

A new study from Brad Bushman of Ohio State University comes to the conclusion that some players of violent video games are led there out of a sense of frustration because they cannot engage in taboo behaviors in the real world such as stealing or cheating. Don't worry, the latest Bushman study will connect this to aggression, violent video games, and a negative effect of some kind... The temptation to steal or cheat is sometimes great — especially when the risk of being caught is low.

It looks like the Boys Scouts of America are finally recognizing that video games and technology are important in society. The Boy Scouts of America is now offering a merit badge in game design, according to GamesBeat. The organization has apparently spent the last two years building a program that will enable scouts to do the work necessary to earn the badge.

Your young son or daughter comes home and asks the one question you worried that you would inevitably have to answer since the day they were born into this world: "Where do babies come from?" Well as Apple used to be fond of saying, there's now an "app for that." It's called Birdees, and it is an educational app for iOS devices created by Vancouver-based educational entertainment software developer GoTo Educational Technology Inc.

An interesting article on The Atlantic examines why sin taxes like the one proposed for video games by Connecticut State Rep. Debralee Hovey (R-112th District) never really do anything productive. You may recall that Hovey, who represents the district that includes Newtown, Connecticut, proposed a 10 percent sin tax on violent video games rated "Mature" by the ESRB.

As part of a New York Times article (as reported by Polygon) on the study of violent video games, a new study emerged showing that a decline in violent crime, even as sales of violent video games more than doubled.

Organizers of the annual National STEM Video Game Challenge - Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media announced today that student submissions of original video games and game designs is now opened at www.stemchallenge.org. In its third year, the annual challenge hopes to inspire and motivate interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by tapping into students’ enthusiasm for playing and making video games.

Yesterday Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) released "A Comprehensive Plan That Reduces Gun Violence and Respects the 2nd Amendment Rights of Law-Abiding Americans," which details the recommendations of the " Congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force." While there are plenty of recommendations on guns and curbing gun violence, mental health issues and school safety, there is a portion of the report dedicated to violent media.

Children's rights advocate and attorney Paul Mones (@MonesPaul on Twitter) delivers a "Perry Mason moment" in a new editorial over at the Huffington Post titled "Video Games Hold No Answers." In it Mones notes that making a connection between violent crimes committed by teens based on the video games, movies, or even mu

President Barack Obama unveiled measures today to curb gun violence in America that he wants Congress to pass as soon as possible, and issued executive orders calling for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to conduct a study on whether there is a correlation between gun violence and "violent video games" and other forms of media.

According to a Polygon report, the video game industry executives and other interested parties that met with Vice-President Joe Biden's Gun Violence Commission walked away feeling that they were unscathed, and that Biden was looking for general input on media and violence.

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Anti-Censorship and Social Issues Committee Chairman Daniel Greenberg has written a letter to Vice-President Joe Biden calling for more studies and offering the organization's assistance and expertise as the Vice-President's task force on gun violence meets with various groups about solutions to the problem on mass shootings in America.

In addition to asking the gaming community to voice its collective opinion on discussions on video games taking place in Washington this week, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has written a letter to Vice-President Joe Biden, who is heading up a task force to look at ways to deal with gun violence in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting that happened in mid-December.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued a call to action this morning calling on the gaming community and its members to email their representatives in Congress and the President of the United States to let them know that blaming video games for the recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut is wrong-headed, and that there is no research to suggest that there is a correlation between gun violence in America and playing video games.

In an interview on CBS This Morning Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that a frank discussion on a myriad of issues will be the only way to seriously curb gun violence in America beyond a discussion about gun control. That discussion should include violence found in some video games, substance abuse, and mental illness.

The Escapist reports that community members in the town of Southington, Connecticut have put a bulls eye on violent video games in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that saw 20 children and six adults murdered by a lone gunmen in mid-December.

Writing over at the official web site for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), Advisory Chair For Education & Outreach Betsy Gomez points out that Senator Jay Rockefeller’s (D – WV) recent announcement of a bill mandating that the National Academy of Sciences research the effect of video games on children is misguided and a very familiar topic for anyone who understands the history of the comic book industry.

University of Missouri Media Researcher Greg Perreault pens an enlightening article on violence and video games over at the Huffington Post, and while the entire article is definitely worth reading an excerpt from it really caught our attention. The excerpt is an exchange between Perreault and an unnamed journalist who contacted him looking to use him as an expert.

Kotaku points out that Chris Ferguson, who you may know better as the professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M University who often argues against the idea that violent video games have a causal effect to violent behavior in the real world, has written a small bit of commentary over at Time Magazine's web site.

Winda Benedetti from NBC News conducts an interesting interview with two child psychologist to ask them about the effects of gaming on young children. She interviews Dr. Tyler Black, Clinical Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Emergency Unit at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver, BC, Canada; and Dr. Matthew Chow, the Clinical Director of Telepsychiatry at BC Children’s Hospital.

On Friday morning's edition of Morning Joe on cable news network MSNBC Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) said that he doesn't think changes in guns laws would have stopped the Sandy Elementary School shooting last week that resulted in the death of 20 children and six adults. He also talked about violent video games, but to the congressman's credit he mentioned his own parental responsibility in keeping his son from playing "M" rated games.