The Cape Town Declaration on Open Education was recently formally released to the public (1, 2) after its initial release for comments to the educational community last fall in the wake of the Cape Town conference.
It is a formal declaration of basic principles for the future conduct of education and organized teaching using standards of open content and sharing of resources, information, and curriculum. In part, it says:
This emerging open education movement combines the established tradition of sharing good ideas with fellow educators and the collaborative, interactive culture of the Internet. It is built on the belief that everyone should have the freedom to use, customize, improve and redistribute educational resources without constraint…
However, open education is not limited to just open educational resources. It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues.
Not all of the many voices advocating various forms of open content in education are happy with some of the details of the declaration or the method by which it was arrived at. Stephen Downes has criticized it at length, which has solicited many comments and a detailed response by David Wiley of COSL. (My own reflections on this are elsewhere.)
Related sites:
- The Budapest Open Access Initiative
- A “ha-ha only serious” spoof called the Swansea Declaration on Open Edutainment
UPS and Open Education:
The Open Education movement is an important trend in education today. Should UPS support such a declaration? Is UPS prepared to support this? Not just in word, but in deed and budget? Practically speaking, what would this mean for our research and curricular materials? Would it be willing, for example, to put a Creative Commons copyright on the Slater Museum or other digital collection materials?