The Los Angeles schools' billion-dollar big idea to give every kid an iPad has skidded to an embarrassing stop after the first recipients—including a valedictorian candidate—figured out a way to crack the security imposed on the devices to play games like Temple Run.

Grand Theft Auto, often the whipping-boy for the anti-violent video games movement, is being used by a program in Merseyside, England to help stop children becoming desensitized to violence. Welcome to Bizarro world.

The 'Games are making kids stupid' meme is as fresh as ever, but new research from the university of Wisconsin suggests that video games might, in fact, be creating a generation of scientific thinkers - and not just through Dr Kawashima's Brain Training. Constance Steinkuehler, professor of Education Communications…