Has anyone used Seek challenges as a means to engage youth groups and families with the objective of introducing them to iNaturalist as they gain expertise? We are starting to think about ways to engage youth prior to the 2022 City Nature Challenge and I was wondering if a simple challenge could be set up to introduce Seek (and iNaturalist) to local communities.
Does anyone have suggestions for a suitable pre-CNC challenge? Perhaps explore your backyard or neighbourhood and look for examples of wildlife?
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It makes more sense to start right with local bioblitzes (but with good guidence and constant monitoring), learning Seek first to then learn iNat would need more time, but it depends on how young the youth is?
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The use of Seek would be to engage families and get them interested in nature and in finding ‘things’. Once they get hooked then move on to inat - but first they have to get outdoors and start exploring and learn to stop and observe wildlife around them. Having a challenge might work and as these already exist in Seek thought it might be a new approach.
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Urban area plant observations tend to be dominated by cultivated plants and weeds instead of native plants. It’s probably selfish but I avoid identifying in urban areas in our region because non-native planted trees and flowers don’t interest me much. People are much more likely to keep using iNat if their observations are identified and they engage with other users.
I think a Seek project could be a good way to teach people about the difference between cultivated plants (houseplants, gardens, lawns, landscaping), weeds, and native plants. From comments in the forums, I think a lot of people start with observations of cultivated plants because they’re easy to find and photograph, but get discouraged when no one IDs them.
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My primary interest is in invasive plants, I would love if people were taking photos of weeds! I haven’t used Seek in an educational way, but tried it out and found that some challenges are more obtainable than others. The seek app requires the photo be be identifiable to species via the robot-identifier within the app, which is fine for common plants and weeds found in cities, but not so great for dragonflies due to the limitations of my phone camera. The app is good at identifying common plants in cities, but less good at identifying in preserves. I think it’s a good tool, but maybe familiarize yourself with the potential limitations and design a program that avoids them.
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