Customer Reviews

Digital Literacy

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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.

Digital Literacy

Paul Gilster, the author of Digital Literacy, Finding it on the Net, and The Web Navigator, started off his career studying and teaching Medieval English and history. Gilster made a career change and became a commercial aviator before he found an interest in computers. This interest grew after he began exploring this new medium and decided that it would be an excellent source for his writings. The Internet is an enormous collection of data with millions of pages of information. Many users of the Internet feel overwhelmed by this because they are not digitally literate. Gilster describes digital literacy as the "ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers." He 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. The reader is able to learn how to use the Internet to their advantage not only through software applications, but also through logical thought processes. The book tends to be for those readers who are somewhat familiar with how the Internet works. Readers who have not yet tried to explore the internet on their own may find that the Gilster provides a lot of information that would not be fully understood with out first experiencing it first hand. For those who have Internet experience, chapters on searching the Internet, content evaluation and hyperlinks provide valuable skills for evaluating and interpreting information found on the Internet. The skills that I have picked up from this book have already proven to be valuable in researching and surfing the Internet for entertainment. The main fault that I found with Gilster's Digital Literacy is that for an informative instruction style book he tended to be long winded and stray off into tangents in parts of the book. This was very evident in the section of the book called "An Internet Day." Gilster takes the reader through a day of Internet surfing. Some things were for entertainment and others for research, but the messages he conveyed in this section could have been done just as well with out the ramblings and stray thoughts of a man surfing the Internet. Over all I felt the book was very well written and contains invaluable information for Internet users. I would recommend Digital Literacy for anyone who spends time on the Internet. Although the book is not directly to the point, Gilster's ideas are very clear, and user friendly. We are living in a world that is changing very rapidly, in the most part do to the growth of the internet, those who are digitally illiterate will be left behind.

Gilster, Paul. Digital Literacy. New York: Wiley, 1997.

This book gives a great impression of what the internet looked like in 1997. The book has a chapter on searching that does not mention Google. I had forgotten that AltaVista use to belong to DEC. It mentions pointcast, one of my favorite internet boom companies. The book also describes future business models for CompuServe and AOL.

It is (vaguely) interesting to read about how things looked back then, and the book does talk about the impact of hypertext on the way we read. It briefly references rhetoric of hypertext, but not by that name. Although the title might have been a good one in 1997, it is not about what I think of as digital literacy in 2009.

Digital Literacy by Paul Gilster John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Your brain is the 'killer app' when it comes to harnessing information on the Internet. Powerful search engines only serve up the food, but digital literacy helps you discern the right 'cookie.' But seriously, when was the last time you actually validated information you received from the Web? We tend to take information wholesale off the Net because the curious thing about words - whether it is published in a book or on the Internet - is that it takes on an aura of authenticity. In that sense, the Internet is like a power drill - very useful yet dangerous if used without precaution. Digital Literacy by Paul Gilster strives to equip the Internet researcher with content-evaluation and navigational skills to exploit the Net's many virtual libraries and information kiosks. Content Evaluation As a research tool, nothing beats the Internet with its accessibility to information sources worldwide and its collaborative feature that allows like-minded individuals to share information. But information is a two-edged sword and in the excitement of a multimedia environment, it is easy to check your reservations at the door. Gilster's chapter on content evaluation is instrumental in teaching Internet researchers and browsers how to discern the source of the information by explaining what a web address means. In short, what the .com or .edu at the end of a URL (Universal Resource Locator) mean. In addition, Digital Literacy, delivers some nuggets of advice on how to steer search engines in the right direction instead of getting tossed around by the surf of information. Critical Thinking On the down side, Digital Literacy, with its good intentions to teach information management to the Internet researcher is about a hundred pages too long. Frankly I wasn't interested in Gilster's long narrative of his typical day on the Net. Call me impatient, but a self-improvement or informational book should do just that - inform. And as concisely as possible. In a time when prose is more or less restricted to novels whereas information on the Net is presented in a non-linear hyperlinked format, it seems contradictory to read through a 250-page book to learn how to retrieve information from the Net effectively. Anecdotes are essential, but complete documentation of one's work day is a waste of a reader's time, especially one who is anxious to improve his or her proficiency on the Web. Digital Literacy is an easy read for those who would appreciate additional background information on the nature and the future of digital literacy on the Net. But for individuals intent on beefing up their net-savvy, you should go straight for the core four chapters of the book.

Paul Gilster's, "Digital Literacy", is not a book about how to get around the Internet, but rather about enhancing the human experience. The World now rests upon a point and click procedure. He talks about how landmark inventions, such as written language and the printing press, changed how procedures were done. He feels that the Internet ranks up with these monumental inventions. This is not a passing fad. Gilster calms fears about the possibility of the virtual library pushing the real library to extinction. They are parallels. The virtual book is used for specific information. "The physical book is what I bring to the easy chair in front of my fireplace to read, to explore, to mull over with a glass of wine." Gilster also talks about the importance of using discretion when finding information. Many sites out there are not credible, but many are. Make sure the source is credible. This book is written for individuals who already have computer knowledge. It doesn't show you how to get around the Internet, but rather, increases methodology on how to find specific information, after exploiting popular resources, and a reorientation of the thinking process. I found this book to be boring, and above my level of computer knowledge. I would recommend this book to individuals who spend an above average amount of time on the Internet, and are looking for ways to increase their computer knowledge.

Paul Gilster's, "Digital Literacy", is not a book about how to get around the Internet, but rather about enhancing the human experience. The World now rests upon a point and click procedure. He talks about how landmark inventions, such as written language and the printing press, changed how procedures were done. He feels that the Internet ranks up with these monumental inventions. This is not a passing fad. Gilster calms fears about the possibility of the virtual library pushing the real library to extinction. They are parallels. The virtual book is used for specific information. "The physical book is what I bring to the easy chair in front of my fireplace to read, to explore, to mull over with a glass of wine." Gilster also talks about the importance of using discretion when finding information. Many sites out there are not credible, but many are. Make sure the source is credible. This book is written for individuals who already have computer knowledge. It doesn't show you how to get around the Internet, but rather, increases methodology on how to find specific information, after exploiting popular resources, and a reorientation of the thinking process. I found this book to be boring, and above my level of computer knowledge. I would recommend this book to individuals who spend an above average amount of time on the Internet, and are looking for ways to increase their computer knowledge.