The Little Taxonomist

We are expecting our first child in a bunch of months and I have been thinking about all kinds of science experiments to perform on/with the bub. I had an idea last week for what I think is a cool little web app that allows a a parent and their child to catalogue the native species around their home and learn more about their local environment. I am referring to this idea as "Little Taxonomist".

I'll present the idea in the context of some stories:

Story #1
A father and son are curious about the plants and animals in and around their house and neighbourhood. In an effort to learn more, they decide to begin to catalogue the things they see in their backyard. They select a subject (say a flower, tree, or insect), photograph it, and note down a few descriptive phrases. They enter this information into a web application. The web application accepts the image and structured description and makes informed guesses (based on location and time of year and subjects collected by others) as to the exact species of the subject. The web application also suggests interesting subjects that are known or expected to exist in their area (probabilistically based on entries of other entries in the area), and some information about where they might be found, creating a context sensitive scavenger hunt. Slowly, a subject every few days, more on weekends, over weeks, they build up a catalogue of plants and animals in and around their home. Together they have learned more about the specifics of the suburban flora and fauna.

Story #2
A primary school class have a week or month long assignment that is a scavenger hunt of genera and/or species in the school ground. The class is split into pairs or small groups and allocated a flip camera (or equivalent single button point-and-shoot). They have a list of hints or requirements as well as blank pages, structured to capture basic taxonomic descriptions. Students return to the classroom and use the computer to copy the photos from the camera, drag them into the web application and add their descriptions. Students are awarded badges and points for the breadth and depth of species described, teams are ranked, and some indication of what other groups are finding is provided.

Vision
A web application for children to be completed in groups or with a guardian. The objective is to describe subjects in the local area (home or neighbourhood) and in so doing learn more about the local flora and fauna. The system encourages the collection of species by intelligently guessing based on brief descriptions and photos as to the actual known species. A gamaification layer is provided that includes badges, points, leaderboards, and similar extrinsic motivators. Additionally, the system uses the localized information in aggregate to suggest subjects to look for (to "collect"), and a probabilistic expectation that they can be spotted (you have a 90% chance of seeing a fruit bat between 5pm and 8pm by looking up). This probabilistic understating of what can be seen in the local area would be coupled with the gamification system, highlighting rare finds. The system would provide all data in aggregate (anonymize) allowing kids to explore what others are finding in their neighbourhood and the types of descriptions being used.

The following are some mock screens I hacked together in Google Docs:

Mock: Add Subject

Mock: List of Subjects

Forget kids, I want to use this. There might be a general case for adults with smart phones.

I am not sure whether I will build it yet, I figure it needs a 5-10 year old child to make it fun. I figure it could make money by selling some cheap cameras with a website subscription or maybe targeted advertising (kids+science).

A friend pointed me to Project Noah, which is a similar idea, but not the same.

I'm eager to hear what people think, seen anything like this? Would you use it yourself or with a child?