Jimmy Wales Joins Advisory Board of CK-12 Foundation

Wikipedia Founder to Join Next-Generation Textbooks Initiative

July 20, 2009 --

PALO ALTO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 07/20/09 -- The CK-12 Foundation, a Silicon Valley non-profit organization with a mission to provide online up-to-date and standards-aligned textbook content to K-12 students around the world, today announced the appointment of Jimmy Wales to the Foundation's Advisory Board. Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, where he currently serves on the advisory board. He is also the co-founder of Wikia, a free web hosting service for wikis.

"We are excited to have Jimmy as a member of our Advisory Board. He is a pioneer in the areas of online collaborative authoring and freely licensed creative works and therefore a natural fit and an invaluable resource for CK-12," said Neeru Khosla, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the CK-12 Foundation. "It's an honor to have him join us and we look forward to continuing our work together."

CK-12 has created an online system for the creation and editing of "FlexBooks" that are free, standards-aligned, high quality and customizable by subject, language and level of difficulty. "Our goal is to reduce the cost of textbook materials and to provide free updated learning material to K-12 students all around the world. Our FlexBooks include science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) content and all of it is created and donated by our expert educators. It is personalizable, printable and projectable for multiple use," Ms. Khosla said.

"Free knowledge for free minds is my personal motto, and CK-12 represents a core initiative to make that dream a reality. By pushing forward the idea of freely licensed textbooks and learning materials, CK-12 is changing the face of education forever," said Mr. Wales. "CK-12 is, in my mind, the most important initiative in existence today to change the face of K-12 education in the U.S. and around the world. I'm pleased and proud to be a part of it."

CK-12's Advisory Board meets quarterly with co-founders Neeru Khosla and Murugan Pal and offers leadership and expertise in the areas of education, technology, community building and innovation.

CK-12 Advisory Board Members:

-- Andy Bechtolsheim, Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems and Product Architect of the Systems Group at Sun Microsystems -- Vinod Khosla, Co-Founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems, Founder of Khosla Ventures -- Larry Rosenstock, Founding Principal of High Tech High -- Graham Spencer, Chief Technology Officer of JotSpot -- Deborah Stipek, Ph.D., James Quillen Dean and Professor of Education at Stanford University -- Kim Totah, Co-Founder and Partner of McCabe & Totah -- Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia, Co-Founder of Wikia

About CK-12 Foundation

CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to provide online up-to-date, standards-aligned textbook content for free to all K-12 students in the U.S. and around the world. This includes universal access to the online system that is designed for collaborative, custom-collated, self-publishable educational content that can be adapted for individualized needs in a digital-age textbook known as a FlexBook. CK-12 was founded in 2007 by Neeru Khosla and Murugan Pal and comprised of a group of expert educators, editors, engineers and advisors. For more information, visit http://about.ck12.org.

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