I want to explore sites that help children learn to identify plants, including edible and poisonous ones, perhaps with games.
What age range? I have to admit that I've not run across anything like this yet - in fact, plant ID sites are relatively hard to come by no matter what the level.
I'm thinking of anyone up to age 18, as the youngest could be accessing the site with older folks. Beginner adults would also benefit from a simple approach. I just want it to be child-friendly, very visual, not getting at i.d. from the traditional, scientific route. Most of the field guides I've looked at so far do the latter and seem to assume some basic knowledge, which overwhelms the beginner. My plan is for the total neophyte. Why are there so few websites? Is it lack of interest, time money, or are groups in the process of working on this? Does plant i.d. on the web take substantially more time to complete compared to print?
I think it is in part due to the fact that there are so many plants, and often identification requires some skill. Take the example of BugGuide which does the first step in the process very well - a handy clickable visual reference in the upper left gets you started. After that, though, it gets complicated quickly. If a web site was designed to be very local (to restrict the number of possibilities), it would work - but then the question of cost vs. benefit comes into play (it would be a relatively high cost venture to assemble a plant ID guide that works well enough for a local area, and the number of potential users is low). That being said, there is software out there to help build these things: see Lucidcentral.
Use your favorite search engine and enter "learning about plants" or something similar. Here are several results that look promising... http://www.dixie.fayette.k12.ky.us/WebQuests/learning_about_plants.htm http://lakelandschools.org/edtech/teacher/LTPM/Plants.html Webquest: Plants http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00001399.shtml
I really think that books are better for this purpose than websites, because they present information in a more structured way - a book or chapter is about a certain type of plant, and the child (or adult for that matter) automatically gains context along with the identity of the specific plant in question. I find that people whose information comes from the internet often possess random fragments of information that they cannot sequence or organize.
I just started a thread on Botany with Kids at http://www.afterschoolers.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=291&forum_id=3. There are photos of a leaf press collection we have started with the kids. I'm not sure if you are homeschooling or just augmenting your children's education, but this has been a wonderful resource for our family. HTH. angel