68 | JADE
SARAH L TAYLOR
although one student responded“ neutral”. Overall, 92 % rated the app as good or excellent( Table 3). Team 1 noted:
“ The location feature using the [ internal ] GPS allowed for relatively smooth following and positioning. The locator also identified your direction using an internal compass which helped when working out what tree you were facing- helpful when near a cluster of trees and having to only examine one. The app interface does need a little‘ polish’, but generally it is very useful to find target trees.”
Other teams found that the photo images helped to deal with some inaccuracies in locations of the target trees.
There was a divergence of opinion on which tree apps worked best when it came to identifying the target species. British Tree ID was the only app to achieve 100 % good or excellent ratings( Table 3) and was the top scoring app when ratings were compared across individual student responses( Figure 7). By contrast, LeafsnapHD was the only app to get a“ poor” rating( Table 3) and had the joint lowest top rating along with FSC trees( Figure 7). There were a plethora of favourable comments on Tree ID, including:
“ TreeID was found to be most useful”,“ Treeid was the best … X is buying Treeid now!”, and“ TreeID was good with its feature for comparisons between similar looking species to help you when you’ re stuck between two lookalike species.”
Table 3: Student ratings of the apps used in the workshop activity