Posts in Category: EdTech Inquiry
Waste Land: A Climate Anxiety Haunted House
Waste Land: A Climate Anxiety Haunted House is a public art project curated by myself, Kate Brooks-Heinimann, and Kay Gallivan . We turned a pre-demolition house into a pop-up haunted house art exhibition themed around climate anxiety. The project was organized by students in the University of Victoria’s Teacher Education Program in collaboration with students at Esquimalt High School. It was open to the public and involved many artists from the Victoria community.
The purpose of Waste Land was, and still is, to raise awareness about the climate crisis in an accessible, creative, and artistic way. Participating artists were encouraged to use reclaimed materials for their work and have it relate to the theme of climate change and climate anxiety.
Social Media Links
Website https://www.wastelandclimateanxiety.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/wastelandclimateanxiety/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/wastelandclimateanxiety/
Plant Snap Review
For the Tech Inquiry project I am, along with my group, researching plant identification apps. The first one I have tried is called Plant Snap. It’s free and pretty reliable. Here’s a bit more about it…
What can I do with PlantSnap?
🌿 take photos of unknown plants, flowers, cacti, and succulents, and discover their names
🌿 upload a plant photo from my photos to use in the app
🌿 put “snaps” into “my collection” folder on the app
🌿 search within a database of 585,000 plants
🌿 search for gardens, and people/accounts
🌿 scroll through a “feed” page that has recently posted PlantSnaps by the app’s users
🌿 add “friends” by following other PlantSnap users
Pretty sweet! What don’t I like? Well…
🍂 limited to taking 10 snaps a day as a non-premium user
🍂 have to view advertisements as a non-premium user
🍂 my feed is filled with people I do not know and I can’t stop that
🍂 there’s a lot of extra stuff I don’t need; like the “feed”, explore function (allows me to view plants around the world), and I also keep getting posts asking if I am learning a new language
🍂 sometimes the PlantSnap calculator is incorrect; it mistakes the plant I’ve uploaded for another plant, and I have to do a bit of digging to see if each plant I have photographed really is what the app tells me it is.
🍂 when I post a photo to my collection it automatically attaches my photo to the plant’s page. For example, the photos below are mine, and were added to the plants page without my permission. I don’t actually mind this, but someone else may be bothered
Some of my own snaps!
Loved learning this berry is edible! I ate one the other day thanks to this app!
This was a test to see if the app could identify the common snowberry. It did!
Final Thoughts
I do like this app. Its pretty user friendly, despite the ads, and I don’t have to engage with the explore function and feed if I choose not to. These functions might also be very useful to another person unlike myself. I also bet that if I purchased the premium (which is $12.00 for a lifetime), many of the minor annoyances would disappear and be replaced with some perks. For me,10 snaps a day is definitely manageable, and I’m not using the app to connect with other users but merely as a way to figure out which plant I have discovered!
If you’re curious about trying PlantSnap, I’d say go for it. Its free and does the job if you’re just looking to learn the name and some brief information about a plant you’ve stumbled across.
Website Link
https://www.plantsnap.com/