Cape Town and Budapest Declarations

For week one of the Open Educational Resources course we were asked to read both the Cape Town and Budapest Declarations and sign them if we agreed. I signed both of them.

I agree strongly with the statements made in both. The Budapest Declaration makes the point that freely sharing ideas for the "sake of inquiry and knowledge" is an old tradition. I believe this is what has allowed our collective knowledge evolve over time.

Limiting access to ideas only limits how these ideas change over time. I suppose that is why access to ideas was limited - to limit the changes to that idea. An idea is the property of the idea holder however that idea came from the idea holder's exposure to other ideas. How could it not? So, to say that an idea should remain static is ridiculous.

The point of documents like these is to raise awareness about the free sharing of ideas. I really liked that both documents gave suggestions for action. Even if changes at the institutional level are a long time coming documents like these at least have people thinking about change.

We are using Angel as our course management software in this class. Using any CMS is in direct opposition to what the Cape Town and Budapest declaration support. We are closing off our ideas and discussions when we should be opening them up.