February 14–20, 2007, Number 431
Moving snow is something just about everyone does in Houghton. Whether it's hi-tech or low-tech, the job gets done. Maybe the Barkboard forums will have a snowblower for sale or name someone who wants a shoveling job?!
The Barkboard Forums
Michigan Tech students have a great way to share information with one another, though only a small percentage of them know about it. Barkboard is a forum for Michigan Tech students, faculty, and alumni that currently consists of 5,200 registered users and more than 1,300 posted articles. Even though this number looks fairly high, very few people know about the forum when asked if they have used it.
Many parents know of one area of the forum, this is the “ride” board. This board consists of three different forums: the general ride board, break board and carpooling board. The break forum updates depending on what school break is next and usually contains quite a few posts as the break gets closer.
The most frequently posted forum is the “for sale or rent” board. This forum includes books, computers, vehicles, housing, and general. The books forum gets really busy around the end and beginning of the semester as people are posting the books they have for sale and the books they are looking to buy. Currently, the housing forum has been quite active due to re-contracting coming up in a couple of weeks and many of the off-campus houses and apartments filling up for next year. I will discuss housing in detail for my next article, but this is a great place to have your students start looking if they want to get out of the dorms.
There is an “activities and interests” board that does not get used nearly as much as the previous two. This board mostly is used to update students on when Huskies sporting events will be taking place and when Michigan Tech has upcoming events. The interests’ forum is a great way to meet new people with similar interests. Whether it is card games, video games, movie marathons, or whatever, this is the place for people to form groups and make new friends.
There is also a “discussion” board that can be quite popular at times. It consists of three forums: the general discussion, computer discussion, and the flame forum. I have used the computer discussion forum quite a bit when my computer was having problems, since the people that read this forum are very knowledgeable and offer a lot of guidance. The flame forum is for the students to get some steam off their chests. This can consist of anything that might be annoying the users, from parking tickets to just the fact that there is too much snow (not my opinion).
The newest board is the “lost and found.” It is pretty easy to understand what this forum is used for. This board actually was formed because users requested it. The nice thing about Barkboard is that the users essentially have a say in what kind of boards the forum will contain. Be sure to pass this site on to your students, since I have used it for about two years and love it. I have found riders downstate, sold quite a few textbooks, and even recommended clubs for students when they expressed an interest in a certain activity.
If there are ever any topics that you feel should be addressed, please send me a personal email and I will try my best to include that in my future articles.
Until next week,
- Michigan Technological University
- 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931-1295
- 906-487-1885