Digital Literacy [Hardcover]

I found the book Digital Literacy a very enjoyable and interesting book to read. I got as great deal of information from the readings that will help me in the future with Internet use. The Internet is a source of information with millions of ways of retrieving the data. There are times that I get overwhelmed with the Internet because of all the information and not knowing how to retrieve the info. Gilster shows that despite this overwhelming amount of data it is possible to find the information that you are looking for and confirm that it is from a reliable source. This has helped me in valuable ways. Gilster shows the Internet user how to navigate the Internet with good content-evaluation skills. I felt that chapter 4 (content-evaluation) of this book was most important. The Internet has given our society an incredible tool for research and entertainment. There are many people that don't believe this to be a positive thing. However, those that are learning and are excited about the Internet should read this book. The beginner may have a difficult time with a couple chapters but Gilster does an excellent job of helping the beginner with some very important information and the basic thinking skills needed to use the Internet.

Digital Literacy gives you an overall view of Internet language and how different parts of the Internet are used. Paul Gilster refers to digital literacy in the sense of not only being able to scroll down on a web page but fully understanding how pages are linked together to get the best and most infromation to one's benefit. Gilster strongly feels the Net, in contrast to written information within a library is unfiltered and can contain unreliable information. A lot of people often take a web page at face value, believing the content within it is factual. By taking the proper steps to evaluate a web page one can determine its reliability. Examining the page for author names along with other materials that list their occupation, location, and their email is useful to determine a web page's validity. Also by using major search engines to do searches on authors names, background, and other articles they have written is important to remember. Paul Gilster leads us on a journey called the "Internet Day." This gives a full account of how within one day of work as an author he can easily contact my sources of information from news groups, online chats with other authors, stock report checks, and newspaper headline readings. Throughout this book Gilster consisently compares the Internet resources to that of the actual physical world of books and magazines. He compares and contrasts the downfalls and benefits of both sets of information. Will the Internet elminate the library with a so called virtual library? Gilster discusses this throughly and feels that there will always be a demand for that physical world of literature and books to touch. But the immediacy of split second retrieval of information will and has brought about many changes. Card catalogues have been quickly replaced with online catalogues and book sorting. He believes the sacrifice of some things always is expected if change must occur. Therefore one must use digital literacy to sort through scads of information and commercialism brought on by the Internet to take in the arts, literature, and science that is truly beneficial to us. I thought this book was very useful in the sense that it brought to my attention how Internet information should not be taken at face value. It should be critically evaluated and researched before using its material for research. I feel this is an error I have made and I'm sure others have also. So, if one wanted to read about how you should "knowledge assemble" a five step plan on how to evaluate and pick apart each web page I would highly recommend this book. An excellent point that Gilster did bring to my attention was the fact the Internet is very beneficial in the sense that it gets us away from the television. It allows for us to become an active participant in a medium instead of propping ourselves in front of the TV with a bag of chips. I thought this was very interesting because it gave a positive view about the Internet instead of so much negative hype about Internet use and addication.

Although this book is several years old, it still holds an interesting insight into the world of the internet. The fact that it is several years old and raises questions about what direction the net was going, or in what ways it would become popular, is interesting as some of those questions have been answered by now.

Paul Gilster weaves an intersting background on the internet with a more anothropological look into how the internet has and is affecting our thinking and outlook at how information is perceived and passed on. The book talks in a fascinating way about how the internet forces its users to adopt different approaches to information sharing, learning, and distributing. The fact that the internet is rapidly closing down the international boundaries is also addressed.

While much of the book is an easy to understand look into how the internet works, operates, and can be utilized, the aspects I enjoyed most were the questions and answers he had about how the internet affects our traditional ways of thinking and dealing with people, the world, and its communities.

Even for a tech savvy person, this is an interesting book as it speaks to the thinking necessary behind the internet in order to maximize its potential.