Japan continues its long trend of inserting computers and cyborgs into all aspects of daily life, as it is announced that special versions of the Nintendo DS will be distributed to school students at the elementary and junior high levels. No word on how soon all the teachers will be fired.

Shigeru Miyamoto, thoroughly famous among Nintendo-nerds for his amazing titles, which include Legend of Zelda, Mario Bros, and Donkey Kong, is heading up the project personally. He recently was made an Academy Fellow at the BAFTA Awards in London. This is the highest honor they bestow, and this puts him in the company of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick.

While there, he told reporters that re-tooling the DS for educational purposes is “maybe the area where I am devoting myself the most.”

There is not a whole lot of information on the full extent of the coming educational programs, and to be sure many brain games exist already, but with Nintendo devoting its big guns to the program, it’s clear this is just the beginning.