Getting to Know iNaturalist
So far, my experience with iNaturalist has been very positive. I am a hands-on learner, so after watching some of the videos to familiarize myself with the app, I began to play around with navigating the pages. I am the type of person who will even go in and edit my app settings, although they are not critical to the functionality of the app, just so that I know I whether or not that feature will benefit me in the future. It took me some time to figure out where to find certain things (like journal entries), but now that I am becoming more familiar with the layout of the app I am beginning to enjoy the way it is set up. One thing I did notice was that the layout will vary slightly depending on where you are accessing it from - I could read journal entries on my phone but could not comment on them; once I went on to my laptop I was able to leave a comment on the same journal entries I was reading. I think experiences like this will be helpful in the future. I imagine that most of my time spent on the app will be through my phone, because while I am out in the field I like to perform documentation and record my observations on the spot while the thoughts are fresh in my mind (assuming I have the time to spare). I am a very fast-paced person and I think intentionally slowing down to observe the world around me will be a great benefit to me. One thing I do enjoy about iNaturalist, aside from the information sharing, is the ability to quickly access information about the biota that I am in the process of documenting. There are many species that I can identify, but also many that I could not tell you much about, regarding things such as when their breeding season takes place, or what their taxonomic classification is. If I can document a species and come away with one more piece of information than I originally knew, I would consider that a win. There is so much to learn about the world around us that learning a little bit more each day is the way I would approach becoming a better naturalist.
Comentarios
I agree that learning in the field is a one step at a time process. It's amazing as the knowledge slowly accumulates. I have found that learning in the field on inaturalist is easy. It took me a while to realize what the i button was for and then to realize you can go even farther in learning about the species of interest. I recently found that if I click on the name of a person who confirms or adds an ID to my observation, I not only find out about them, but often there will be a list of the most common identifiers of the species of interest. I recently went further and clicked on the ID of one of the frequent identifiers and found one of their blog posts on keys to identifying species in this genera which pointed out key identifying characteristics. I found this really helpful. There is alot more for me to discover about inaturalist. I'm very happy that this is a focus of this course.
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