A free app from the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic that encourages users to get out to identify and collect images of plants, insects, animals, and other organisms.
This free app from the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic includes organism identifying technology that utilizes your camera to match up a plant, animal, and insect with their database to identify it. This technology is really fun and amazing, and it costs nothing. That is some incredible value!
This app is essentially an interactive encyclopedia of organisms around you! There is a TON of educational value here, as this app encourages you or your child to get out and learn about the organisms in the world. We love how immersive the experience is and that it can be used on the go, getting kids engaged in outdoor activities.
Being a Nat Geo product, it has a robust privacy policy meaning all users will be safe while using this app. It’s also worth noting that there are no ads or purchases to be made in this application.
On the title page of this app, you can either log in, sign up, or continue without signing in.
In order to sign up, you must enter your birthday, and be over the age of 13, and have an email address.
After that, you can get right to business. After you grant access to the app to know your location and use your camera, you will be introduced to the organisms local to your location and challenged to get out of your house and go identify and capture pictures of them for your collection. Once outside, you tap your camera button in the app, and it will prompt you to get different angles of the desired organism in order for it to accurately identify the Species, Genus, Family, Order, Class, Phylum, and Kingdom. It will inform you when it knows enough and when to take the picture for your location.
After that, you can visit that organism in your collection anytime and view facts and taxonomy about it, as well as see on a map other sightings of that same organism!
Challenges are occasionally issued to users that give you goals in what to look for! In the most recent challenge, issued in December 2020, the Ecosystem Challenge encourages you to find 3 animals, plants, insects, and 1 arachnid and capture their image with your camera. You are free to begin and make progress on any challenge issued in the past as well.
Summary
Seek is an educational blast as users connect with the living things around them. Learning the names and relations of plants, insects and animals in your area helps you feel connected to the world around you as you snap pictures and add them to your collection.
Pros
Easy to use
Adding to a collection is great fun
Very interactive and educational
Cons
Rare issues getting an exact identification
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