PARSIPPANY, N.J., March 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Silver Burdett Ginn Religion and Third Day Games, Inc. announced today an agreement to publish a new series of educational video games based on the Gospel readings. The new Gospel Champions(TM) series takes children back to biblical times by recreating Gospel stories in a state-of-the-art game that intertwines action/adventure gameplay with sequenced elements of Bible stories.

Gospel Champions(TM) unlocks a new Gospel story each month to link Sunday Mass readings to students' daily lives. The game series has three different skill settings for grades K-8 and utilizes a family leaderboard to encourage children to play repetitively with their parents, siblings and friends. It also provides the capability for parishes and schools to send personalized messages to kids each time they play the game.

Raymond Latour, President of Silver Burdett Ginn Religion and a Deacon in the Diocese of Paterson, said "The Gospel Champions(TM) games will provide a parish or school with a low-cost, high impact resource for connecting the home to the Gospel proclaimed at our Sunday Eucharist. This very much responds to our Bishops' request in their recent National Directory for Catechesis wherein they ask us to explore each individual medium of communication so as to make the gospel ever more accessible to our youth."

"We are excited and honored to partner with Silver Burdett Ginn Religion to create an innovative educational game for Gospel and Catholic learning," said Brian Mitchell, President of Third Day Games and a Catechist teacher. He added, "This partnership is a significant step in realizing our goal of using the popularity of games to keep our children connected to the Catholic faith in their daily lives."

For an annual site license fee of $125, Gospel Champions(TM) can be easily incorporated into the educational program of any parish or school. Programmed for the 2006-2007 school year, the series includes in-game messaging for engaging students over the summer and can be pre-ordered now. For additional information and a demonstration, visit http://www.gospelchampions.com/

About Silver Burdett Ginn Religion:

Silver Burdett Ginn publishes and distributes faith formation and character education materials and provides educational services for the Catholic and Christian communities. SBG Religion's publishing draws upon Scripture, tradition, the documents of the Church, the best research in pedagogy, and catechetics.

About Pearson Education

Educating 100 million people worldwide, Pearson Education (http://www.pearsoned.com/) is the global leader in educational publishing, providing scientifically research-based print and digital programs to help students of all ages learn at their own pace, in their own way. Virtually all students in America learn from a Pearson program at some point in their educational career. In the U.S., nearly 25,000 schools use Pearson technology to help instruct preK-12 students and manage how they are doing. Pearson provides schools customizable services to create, deliver, score and report educational assessments, both in print and online, that help promote learning. The company is home to such renowned publishing brands as Pearson Prentice Hall, Pearson Longman, Pearson Scott Foresman, Pearson Early Learning, Pearson Learning Group, Pearson Digital Learning, and Pearson Addison Wesley. Pearson Education is part of Pearson , the international media company. In addition to Pearson Education, Pearson's primary operations include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group.

CONTACT: Kate Miller, Pearson Education, 1-800-745-8489,
kate.miller@pearsoned.com

Web site: http://www.gospelchampions.com/
http://www.pearsoned.com/