So though I took the criticisms of Stephen Downes and others seriously, ultimately I concluded that the potential impact of the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education was too powerful for me to ignore. David Wiley has a number of good posts up lately with pointers to the huzzahs, the critiques, and the alternatives, and I would urge you to look them over and give serious thought to whether you care to add your name to the document.
David also has provided a couple web banners, for those of you who share my evident passion for advocacy via remote-hosted images — if only it had some javascript to slow down my page-load speeds even more!
Speaking of which, the Northern Voice banners have been available for some time, offering a number of options how to show your love for The Moose. As you may have noticed, I chose the biggest and most obtrusive option for my homepage…
Like Stephen, I had/have a problem with the closed-doors nature of the declaration. An Open declaration would have been crafted, well, in the open. That said, it’s not likely that a truly Open declaration would ever have been finished – getting everyone to agree on wording and philosophy would have taken decades. So, I decided I’m ok with the closed door start after all, since it got the ball moving. I just added my name to it.