Neeru Khosla, a Living Hero

Neeru Khosla strongly believes in the power of education and is an influential figure in many exciting projects both in the world of education and abroad!

Since 1997, Khosla has been a board member of The Nueva School, an internationally recognized school based in Hillsborough, California that caters to gifted and talented students.  Additionally, she is on the advisory board of the American India Foundation, which helps to accelerate social and economic change in India.  Recently, she was named a member of the Wikimedia Advisory Board.  Previously, Neeru was a trustee of the Pacific Vascular Research Foundation and Connexions, a Rice University open-source project.

Neeru's commitment to education is evidenced by her role on the National Advisory Board for DonorsChoose, an organization dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials in U.S. public schools. Neeru is one of the founding members of the K-12 Initiative of the D-School (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) at Stanford University and a member of the committee to expand the program. Neeru is currently the Co-Founder and Executive Director of CK-12 Foundation. CK-12 is a non-profit organization launched in 2006, which aims to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the US and worldwide.

The CK-12 online service is completely free, funded primarily by donations from the Khosla family.

CK-12's model synthesizes the power of collaborative development (such as Wikipedia) with the flexibility and personalization of an iTunes playlist.  Teachers have the ability to construct their own textbooks, or FlexBooks, by dragging and dropping chapters from texts that have been donated to CK-12's network.  The books can be viewed digitally and it is easy to edit them to include bonus videos and/or links to interesting sites on the Internet.  Additionally, teachers have the option to author and publish their own content for sharing with other educators.  This allows for much greater creativity, innovation, and collaboration among teachers!

As a high school teacher, I find this incredibly exciting.  CK-12 recently presented to the faculty of LPS San Jose, encouraging us to begin using their technology as a tool....completely free.  My enthusiasm was echoed by my principal, who really liked the fact that this technology allows teachers to construct textbooks that are driven by the curriculum, as opposed to curriculum that is driven by the textbooks.  It allows for much greater personalization with students than ever before, and I'm all for that!

(Author's note:  This is the first of ten living heroes that I will be profiling as part of the Live Like A Champion project.  Source credit for most of this information belongs to the CK12 website and Wikipedia.)