Comments

Hi,

On futher reflection, I would like to update some of my earlier comments.

I followed a link someone put up on WikiEducator and edited the discussion page:

http://wikieducator.org/Talk:Open_Education_Declaration

Please read the topics from the bottom up (I entered them in order but they are listed in reverse order - LIFO).

Thanks

Kim

I am an adjunct Associate Professor of Mathematics at Rider University, active as a substitute teacher and mentor in high schools, and a retired professor of physics from Rutgers University. I have taken extensive notes from my experiences and given them to my protégés. Recently I collected them into a book. I suggest that your library purchase the book for the benefit of students, parents, and teachers.

I just wrote a book, "Teaching and Helping Students Think and Do Better". This is available on amazon.com, ISBN 978-1-4196-7435-8. May I suggest that you order a copy for the library? The readers will be very pleased!

The reviews are superb. Students, teachers, and professors who have looked at the book give it the highest rating.

Typical comments that I hear are things like this: "Hi, Dr. Aranoff!" said a girl, "I got a 100 on the test! I am so happy! Thank you so much!"

I also wrote a paper in Gifted Education Press Quarterly:
http://www.GiftedEdPress.com/GEPQWINTER2008.pdf

Here are some comments:

"We really enjoyed the latest GEPQ and especially liked the article by Sanford Aranoff. He took a very practical approach on an eyeball to eyeball level. A lot of this really needed saying. He showed a keen awareness of the trends towards anti-scientific education that are out there. We made a hard copy of this article and will send it on to the heads of the science and math departments at Loyola Academy with the intention of their distributing it to department chairs in the Jesuit Secondary Education Association."

Dr Aranoff

I am sure that your book would be an excellent resource. In the spirit of the declaration, why don't you consider releasing it under a more open licence and ensure that it is freely available on the internet so that more people can benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Mark Horner

This is a great idea. Hope more people will sign up

Tongue in Cheek Spoiler warning

But why persist in Graeco-Roman alphabetical discrimination by listing signees names from A-Z. Why not randomize. Those in the W's, X's Y's Z's have rights too.

Obviously it makes for easier searching!

I need no convincing as to the stability, and the last few years, the user friendliness of Linux as an alternative to Windows as I am a systems engineer.
But maybe some Universities need some convincing. In February 2007, parliament made a decision to switch over to open source in all state departments. It has been followed up in October, by an announcement that Sita aims to train 10,000 linux students by 2010.
Now Universities, receive subsidy from Government. There are thousands of students who can not afford an expensive operating system and would love to use a free available one, for free.

Are Universities not morally obliged to go for open source themselves, rather than to switch over to Microsoft?
Your comments?

Hi!

I love your idea! Where do other forms of education outside of government jurisdiction (such as home schools and alternate schools) fit into this type of educational access?

AJLM

What a wonderful dream--but not a new one. For quite a while now technology has been capable of reducing the world's great libraries to shoe-box size container, and giving a duplicate free of charge to each human on Earth. We could do this, but we won't, because too many of us want to make money off of the ideas we think we own.

Hi all
thank you for your initiative that I have signed.

Just to let you know the SLOOP project, co-funded by the European Community: Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective (http://www.slooproject.eu). We are working just in the direction of this declaration.

If you like you can find here the SLOOP booklet: www.sloopproject.eu/file.php/1/SloopDownload/Booklet/0_Booklet_EN.pdf

pfr@tes.mi.it

It is with great pleasure and pride that I herewith pledge the wholehearted commitment to the Capetown Open Education Declaration of the Brazilian Association of Distance Education--ABED, the not-for-profit learned society uniting 2,600 educators and institutions employing distance learning in the academic, school, corporate and non-formal educational communities of our country.
Fredric M. Litto
President,ABED