I’m glad that something I posted was worth a mention in OLDaily. I once asked Stephen if I was on some kind of blacklist since nothing I posted– regardless of the amount of comment or discussion it received, even among those Stephen constantly links to– ever merited even an oblique mention. It’s ironic that my post in reaction to some irritating timing of discussion was anointed, as it’s one of the most narrow in scope and response of any I’ve written about open content or open education.

So, I’m glad Stephen Downes isn’t completely Chris-Lott-Tone-Deaf… It’s just unfortunate that he is interpreting what I wrote in such a strange way. If I’m wrong in something that I said– and I might well be– that isn’t being demonstrated by Stephen forwarding other, related propositions with which I agree (both explicitly and implicitly in the very article he is pointing to). The only thing I actually said that Stephen even alludes to is my difference with Leigh Blackall’s post maintaining that there’s already enough open content. If Stephen believes that– and it seems unlikely or else he wouldn’t, like me, continue sharing his own materials and presentations and ideas– then we’ll have to agree to disagree. But it doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the more important part of Leigh Blackall’s post, or that of my friend Brian Lamb, who I couldn’t respect more!

The sequence of events was essentially something like this:

1. I posted that I was happy that we finally got some traction on moving our organization and faculty toward a more open posture… noting that sharing content in the form of curriculum materials is one step, as OCWC membership is one small part of what we are trying to achieve.
2. A series of posts and Twitters regarding the “boring” nature of “just sharing content” appeared on my screen, some proposing that there was much more to be done.
3. I responded, admitting that the timing was vexing, and agreed that there was much more to be done but that content was still important and that OCWC was one of the good guys in this area where we all benefit from working together.

That’s it. If Stephen or anyone else has something to demonstrate about the rightness or wrongness of anything I write here or anywhere else, I welcome it. But pronouncements that I am wrong, couched in an assertion of apparent opposition with concepts I agree with (!) and that are actually not oppositional at all, are just sloppy reading.

And it’s ironic that Stephen falls right into the No True Scotsman line of reasoning that I explicitly disavow. Sharing content is real open education, just as sharing process, collaborative teaching, and open classes are real open education. I have no feelings about “the OER movement” that I am supposedly defending because it isn’t a monolith. As I’ve said before, if there is a specific movement or organization known as OER, I am not aware of it. I use the term as a blanket label for the matter that we are sharing. I was responding to a number of specific posts on a specific topic and I tried to be as clear as I could in linking to those posts where possible and stating what I perceived them to be saying explicitly or implicitly. Nor would I characterize anyone taking part in the discussion– that I noticed anyway– as being critics of open education.

As I commented there:

The most wrong thing here is your interpretation of my article as being about something much more than it is. There are only two narrow “defenses” involved: the importance of continuing to share content and the help that the OCWC has been in facilitating that activity. I don’t work for a big university, we don’t have a sponsor, sharing through the OCWC is just one aspect of our engagement, and as I made clear– if you’d read the article(s) and what it says rather than reading what you want to be there– I agree with you that the open education movement is about much more than just sharing content. My post was a reaction to a very narrow set of circumstances, primarily not wanting the importance of useful sharing to get lost in the rhetoric being volleyed about to promote those further aspects of open edication, such as sharing process, context, and activities.