Digital Literacy

Until the Net became popular, we were used to pre-packaged, filtered news and information fed to us by giant media outlets. Now there is an abundance of raw material available via the Net. Along with easy access to lots of good stuff, there are sites developed by hate-mongers, conspiracy buffs, and others presenting urban myths or worse as fact. It's imperative, then, that we move from the passive consumer of broadcast media to critical consumers able to quickly assemble reliable knowledge. Digital Literacy capably instructs users in developing a set of critical thinking skills and core competencies that are different from those we've used in the past. Paul Gilster covers topics such as questions to ask when viewing material on a Web site, how to separate form from content, and how links can manipulate the context of hypertext.