On Wednesday, January 4, two of Patricia Orechovsky’s tenth grade honors English classes came to SBU for an exploratory journey through both the open web and the SBU’s databases. They were searching for content related to Elie Wiesel’s Night, which they will be studying and writing about for several weeks. They found so much! Students found video interviews and podcasts with Wiesel out on the open web, and they found book reviews about Wiesel’s books, and Op-Eds by him in SBU’s historical newspaper databases. They learned about the diverse and complicated information landscape, and how searching with different methods and different tools leads to very different results.
Many students from Orechovsky’s class wrote to us afterwards, and here are some experiences they found valuable, and thoughts about what they learned, in their own words:
“It has taught me to never be afraid to ask for help, especially if you have no idea how to start off with researching or just finding stuff online that may interest you.”
“Research can be more fun than you think.”
“You taught us about how to navigate our way into making the process of research easier and taught us about how it’s a journey. I learned we could use certain websites to research our topic.”
“I learned that help is anywhere you look, and that you are not alone. Not sure if I would like to get into writing books, or architecture, or where I am going to go to college. But that trip motivated me. It moved me to focus and think that this is not as impossible as others might put it as.”
“I found it to be very educational to attend this trip because if someone was to explain this skill to me through words I would have stressed over it or not have understood it. Now I feel relieved that it wasn’t very hard to learn to conduct research because I was able to experience it in person with the aid of you guys who dedicate your time to help us students learn valuable skills.”
“Something I’m grateful for about this opportunity is not only learning about research and what goes into it, but the overall sliver of college experience in general. This has been a mindopening experience considering that I have had second thoughts on putting off college but, I loved this experience and it certainly isn’t one I will forget.”
