Insect@thon Results

[Joris Komen]

Hi Listers:-)

With abject apology for cross-posting:-)

I have good news for you:-).  The Insect at thon worked like a bomb!:-)  In
spite of the fact that we had a number of Bill Gates glitches:-) to deal
with prior to event, resulting in a delayed start -  the kids only finished
the training process at 12h00 on Saturday - the results were quite
astounding!  If we had had 30 Imacs this show would have been on the road
at 08h00!:-)

>From 12h30 to 18h30 on Saturday, and from 08h30 to 16h30 on Sunday,
including half-hour breaks for teas and lunch, (6 + 8  - 2.5 hrs = 12.5
hours),  92 kids from 16 schools (we had a last minute gate-crashing school
( 3 kids ) that we simply couldn't turn away - they were sooooo incredibly
keen!:-)), using 4 Imacs and 27 Windoz boxes,  managed to computerize

20, 897 insect inventory records comprising 11 data fields (catalogue
number, order, family, genus, species, collection locality, collector, no.
of specimens and day, month year) representing 97, 696 specimens in the
National Museum's insect collection.

Our immediate post-event validation process picked up 3,232 invalid records
over and above the 20, 987 acceptable inventory records - that's a
remarkably low 13% error margin!  Please take note that 66 kids had not had
*ANY* previous computer experience prior to the event!  We will provide a
more detailed breakdown of these results on the Insect at thon website in due
course.

Oh, by the way - the three top winning team are

Tsumeb Junior Secondary School who managed to computerize  a total of 2,363
records, with only 11 invalid records!  (I think they'll do us proud in
*any* first world museum insect collection next year:-)).  Second and third
teams were Wennie Du Plessis High School of Gobabis with 2214 records (9
invalid records), and Suiderlig High School of Keetmanshoop with 2205
records (9 invalid records).

Now ain't that simply amazing?!!:-)

Best regards!

Joris @ Insect at thon!

PS - by 17h00 on Sunday some 650 webcam requests were logged at the PC
Centre's website - a lot of people came to see the event "live" over the
internet!