Dive Brief:

• Boundless has joined forces with "veteran Wikipedian" SJ Klein, who will serve as an advisor to the cloud-based educational resource provider.
• A blog post from the company cites Klein's commitment to and expertise in community-sourced education, beginning with his contributions to Wikipedia that date back to 2004, his election as a Wikimedia Foundation Trustee in 2009, and stints as director of outreach for the One Laptop per Child Foundation and a Berkman Center for Internet and Society affiliate.
• Essentially, the post says, Klein's advice is meant to help the company "do to textbooks what Wikipedia did for encyclopedias.

Dive Insight:

Specifically, Boundless is looking to make its Cloud Powered Community a place where experts on a variety of subject matter contribute their expertise, engage in discussion with peers, and create a better teaching and learning experience. In the blog post, Klein is quoted as saying he's looking forward to increasing access and personalization of the company's freely-licensed content, which is currently used by over three million students and educators.

Still, sending the traditional textbook the way of Encyclopedia Britannica (which still, by the way, exists in a subscription-based online form) may prove a little more difficult. Bear in mind that most educators don't accept Wikipedia as a credible source on papers, largely due to the fact that it's easy for anyone to change a majority of articles to say whatever they want. At the very least, describing its product using a Wikipedia analogy could make some teachers wary of Boundless' content — unless it stays on its toes by keeping educators in the loop on how that content is verified. (And to its credit, Boundless is transparent about its approval process.)