We’re hosting a youth activity in a few weeks. We’ve got 100 acres of lush bluffs and valleys with hundreds of plant and insect species. We’d like to run a 90-minute challenge with teams to see who can collect the largest variety of species. People new to this will have to create their own accounts, but I believe it will get them excited to keep it going on their own time.
Logistically, which app would be better for me as a moderator to get a quick view of collected species, iNat or Seek? Is this even possible? I’m planning on splitting them into just 5 teams. Will I be able to grab a Quick View from somewhere central, or will I have to look at their individual accounts?
Thanks. I’ve heard of “bioblitzes” before before I’ve never taken part in one.
iNat is much more suited for this, as Seek doesn’t have shareable data. What you’ll want to do is setup a collection project made as a bioblitz, and you can make that an umrella project for your 5 teams (who will have their own projects). This will make the data easily accessible. Here’s the full guide to hosting a bioblitz: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/bioblitz+guide
Seek by itself doesn’t share data but if you are working with youth I would suggest that they get an iNaturalist account, download seek on their phones, and attach Seek to their iNat account. There is an option to do that in Seek. The reason for this is that Seek, as an app, is much friendlier for new users and will help them identify things in real time even as they are trying to take a picture. Then as Zdanko said you can set up your teams in projects and then create an umbrella project to house all of the teams so that you can see the progress all in one place. There are a number of videos out there on how to use the iNat app and Seek app. I have made a few of them myself for my students.
I’d steer away from a competition–especially if it’s to get numbers as opposed to quality. There’s a good chance that you’ll get lots of low-quality observations (by good chance I mean almost all of the observations will be low-quality). It takes a lot of dedication on the part of youth to focus on getting a good enough image to be worth posting.
For a “quick view”, what I’ve done for a location where I host bioblitz is to create a “place” on iNat (but give yourself plenty of padding around the actual border, because the error circle must be within the boundary of the place or else it won’t show up). Then you can view observations in a variety of ways made within that place (including listing observers). See links here: https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/pfau_tarleton/52212-june-bioblitz-timberlake-field-station
With inexperienced youth, expect to deal with numerous, um, challenges in management. I’d urge you to first host a bioblitz with relatively experienced users of iNaturalist.