My name is Cathy Fowler; this is my 7th course in the MET program. I am a teacher-librarian at an Elementary School in Nanaimo, BC. One of my goals as a 21st Century librarian is to connect the reading and writing skills of my students to 21st Century technology and to teach them a variety of ways to use those skills, to express and create, and to be able to access and communicate with the world by providing a wide variety of technology and opportunities to explore. I look forward to further exploring the changing role and necessary skills involved in reading and writing in this age of rapidly changing technology.
I chose this image because though public libraries were not always available to the masses the first libraries afforded the copying and sharing of the earliest texts and resulted in the dissemination of knowledge to a wider range of society. Libraries became the, often highly guarded and secured, centre of early educational, scientific, religious and governmental institutions. The information held within the library’s books, scrolls and texts were seen as valuable, a tangible entity to be shared with a chosen few. As books became more popular and more people were learning to read public lending libraries became popular and the dissemination of information became rapid through the masses forever changing how information was viewed and shared.
