Mr. McG

I’ll check it out this weekend. Is there a tutorial on how to copy these settings into my game?

I firmly believe games have a place in schools and learning. I applaud Niche being made free for schools too. There is lots of potential for it, but this was designed as a game/simulator first and foremost, which require a different kind of commitment and time investment than an educational tool. I used a lot of personal time to figure out how to do that kind of thing as a teacher. Other teachers wanted to do the same stuff but weren’t able to without guidance or training. Principals and parents will want to see how this game relates to curriculum standards, or they may not want it played at school. Most school computers block the software installation without a network administrator approving and installing it for obvious safety concerns of malicious software. I’m loving the game and hope schools approve it to take advantage of your generosity. I just know there are some hurdles that have to be crossed to make this a reality.

Unless I missed it, that is a lot of potential boxes to uncheck in the settings menu, and not a whole lot of guidance for a teacher or student who has never played the game before. Teachers don’t have time to make sure each student unchecks the correct boxes. I don’t recall seeing a select/deselect all option either. Is there a way to copy settings to a different computer quickly and easily? When I was teaching 9th grade science, it would literally take 10-15 minutes at a minimum to get all my students up and running on a simulation, let alone making sure they selected or deselected the proper options. As cool as Niche could be for teachers and students, setting up a simulation for testing the dominance/recessive qualities of a gene is a lot, especially without guidance. I have several things I’m working on, but I’m hoping to throw something together that can be helpful for teachers and students trying to use this in the classroom.

As a former teacher and after a couple times playing, I see potential for its use in schools. A few things limit this though: 1. Lack of integrated curriculum (lesson plans) or built in learning modules 2. It needs a genetics/breeding only mode without the survival aspect for genetics units in schools 3. Along with the genetics only mode, difficulty toggles to automatically exclude certain genes, or to make the genes behave differently with more limited options (example, only two snout options on easy mode with strict dominant/recessive) I have more thoughts too, but these are just my initial opinions.