Cape Town Open Education Declaration--Revolutionary!

Checking my Twitter this morning, I was directed to a "2cents Worth" blogpost by David Warlick in which he promotes the recent "Cape Town Open Education Declaration," an outgrowth of "a small but lively meeting convened in Cape Town in September 2007. The aim of this meeting was to accelerate efforts to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education."

I took the time to read the Declaration, and I hope that you will too. If you are an educator who is reading my blog, I'd dare say you'll be heading on over to the "Sign the Declaration" page and joining the (as of my signature's addition) 687 educators and organizations who have signed. I truly believe that this document provides the best statement of purpose for the myriad interests that become a passion for me. I'm always saying "it's all about the shareshare" for me. The Declaration sums up the reasons I have for that philosophy, and does so in ways I have as yet been unable to articulate.

I'm running 9 ways to Sunday here at work this morning, but I do want to share some of the examples the website offers as open education initiatives already in place. Do any of these interest you? If so, check them out.

CC Learn
Centre for Open and Sustainable Learning
Connexions
Curriki
Learning Activity Management System (LAMS)
OER Commons
Free High School Science Texts
Moodle
MIT Open Courseware
Open Courseware Consortium
WikiEducator

Finally, I'd like to propose a revolutionary notion: Any institution not actively and intentionally contributing to Open Education is well liable to be left behind in the none too distant future. I sugggest that educational organizations officialize an "Open Learning Policy," with a director (or whateveryoumaycallit0 facilitating its development. Last one in the pool is a rotten egg...

[Later] Looks like the state of Florida wants to swim! Read Florida adopts open-content reading platform State officials add FreeReading.net to their approved list of reading curriculum resources from eSchool News!