Nintendo of America has announced a partnership with the National Art Education Association (NAEA) where they will introduce the Nintendo DS into classrooms in selected schools across the country. The idea is to give students a fresh, fun way to learn drawing and painting techniques.

Art teachers in elementary, middle and high school classrooms have been given Nintendo DSi XL systems and copies of Art Academy. These teachers will use the game console and the game to make classroom activities more engaging and fun. This should definitely make the classes more fun for kids.

The folks who make the Fretlight guitar learning system wanted us to check it out and see for ourselves how easy it is to learn guitar with their system. The basic idea is that the frets of the guitar light up. That, along with an interactive learning system which includes videos and tutorials are supposed to make it easy.

Since my son has been learning how to play guitar by more or less teaching himself, I figured he was the perfect candidate. So they sent us the whole kit and my son checked it out. How good is it at teaching you to play the guitar? His review follows:

They never had cool stuff like this when I was a kid. The Roundbox is a portable computer that is designed to encourage creative learning for children. No boring books with boring old text. Instead there is a digital camera, video game console, TV, DVD player, computer and pen, all in one rugged device that your child can’t destroy easily.

What more do you need for learning? It’s for kids from ages 5-14 and has a computer mode, gaming mode, movie mode, art mode and camera mode. The touchpad can even be removed and converted into a wireless mouse.

Do you find that today’s clocks make things too easy, what with their automatic time telling capabilities and effortless upkeep? If so, you might like the Manual digital clock. It won’t do any of that fancy time-telling stuff on it’s own, forcing you to change the time manually…every minute.

It’s actually a neat way for kids to learn about time and how to read digital clocks. I’m sure it won’t take your little tykes very long to start spelling out “hell” and other fun words.

Apparently there aren’t enough slobbering babies teething while biting down on an iPhone. That must be why a developer in Colorado created an iPhone app that caters to babies specifically. The iPhone Pacifier 1 application.

The app teaches kids aged 1-3 basic cognitive, vocabulary, and counting skills while keeping their attention with “stunning visual effects” and classical music. Hmmm. Sounds just like adults. The difficulty settings can be adjusted should you have a smarter than average baby.

Most of us are happy with a nice QWERTY keyboard. Why not have a keyboard that has the ABC’s one letter after each other the way nature intended? The Fast Finger Keyboard is exactly that keyboard. There are three ways to use it. If you are just learning typing, the keys are layed out on the keyboard in alphabetical order. Just press the ‘ABC’ button and the keys will type in that order.

But if you are ready to take it to the next level, you can use it as a normal QWERTY keyboard. The letters are layed out on the keyboard under the ABC keys in red. The other thing this keyboard does is when the ‘F’ key is pushed, IM abbreviations are available with the function keys. “CYA”, “LOL”, and “BTW” etc.

The Good Nite Lite is designed to get your kid on the straight and narrow, because right now he or she is used to staying up late with their DS, hanging on facebook and even scrolling through our very pages to get their gadget fix. Something has to change and the Good Nite Lite is just creepy enough to work, in a teletubby sort of way. It’s designed for children ages 3 to 5 who are learning the difference between day and night and when they should be sleeping. Ok, so maybe a little young to be on the internet at night, but who knows what they get up to.

The device changes colors from warm yellow sunshine to nighttime moonlight according to the times you select. Now your kids will have a visual way of knowing when they should still be sleeping and when to wake up. The Good Nite Lite will be available in a few months for $34.99. You know, when one of these changes to daylight in the factory. Then it will be time for tubby custard and world domination.

Here’s an interesting laptop to get your child if you’ve recently spawned a next generation hero by getting it on with Catwoman or some other costumed freak. Or if your kid is named Robin and you dress him up in a tiny costume maybe. Oregon Scientific is making sure they get a slice of the Dark Knight pie, by offering your children this laptop sprouting bat wings. When closed it looks like Batman’s chest. Or as your child would say, “It look like dada” just before you leave for the next Comic Book convention.

C’mon people, even the kids in Gotham don’t sport Bat laptops. It’s known as the Batman Powerwing Laptop and runs on 3 x AA batteries for $89.99. If any of you adult geeks without kids get this thing for yourself, I suggest you don’t brag about it. For the rest of you, make sure that you let your kids play with it too.

LeapFrog has a new handheld learning/gaming system, the Didj. It should retail for $89.99 when it arrives this summer. LeapFrog isn’t saying that the device is Nintendo DS competitor, but it happens to be aimed toward 6 to 10 year-olds, a demographic that the DS currently rules with an iron fist.

With the Didj they want to up the gaming and graphics while integrating the fancy learning stuff. It’s sure to be a hit with parents who would rather see their kids being educated rather then simply guiding Mario on his latest quest. The Didj has no Wi-Fi connection but it should work with the LeapFrog Connect Application, which lets children customize game content via USB.