Wikipedia and Wikia founder Jimmy Wales is joining the advisory board of a non-profit that is creating an open-content system that teachers and schools can use to create free textbooks.

The CK-12 Foundation, based in Palo Alto, created a Web-based application called Flexr, that allows users to assemble, edit, and adapt textbooks from open-licensed content. In March, the state of Virginia's education department released the beta version of a new physics textbook assembled using the CK-12 system.

This isn't the first time Wales has tried his hand at an open-content textbook project. Wikibooks was created in 2003 with similar goals in mind.

CK-12 was created by Neeru Khosla, who is the wife of uber-venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who also sits on the organization's advisory board. In what could be characterized as either typical Silicon Valley incestuousness or typical Silicon Valley cross-fertilization (or perhaps a bit of both), Neeru Khosla joined the advisory board of the Wikimedia Foundation in December.

(H/t: ReadWriteWeb)

Photo credit: Andrew Lih (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license)