By Ben Terris

Jason B. Jones, who helped start a blog called ProfHacker that provides technology tips for professors.

Gone are the days when instructors resisted technology. Now the question for many is how to make the most of the latest tools. ProfHacker, a blog created by Mr. Jones, an associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, and George H. Williams, an assistant professor of English at the University of South Carolina-Upstate, tries to give answers, including tutorials and strategies for integrating software and teaching. It started a few months ago, is getting 10,000 page views a week, and has 11 contributors. Mr. Jones explained his vision.

Q. With so many technology blogs out there already, why create another?

A. We don't think of ProfHacker as just a tech blog. It's a site that wants to look at the intersection of productivity, technology, and pedagogy in higher education. There are blogs that do tech and blogs that do productivity, but there aren't many targeted at faculty or the higher-education community. Even within that subset, there weren't a lot that explained how and why you might want to use some of these things.

Q. Who is your audience?

A. We've gotten readers who are faculty, librarians, IT staff. We think there are lots of people who want to learn these tools to teach with, but there are also plenty of people who want to make sense of their work environment.

Q. How do you decide what topics make it onto the blog?

A. The things we write about are the things we are struggling with or the things we want to work on. One hundred percent of this stuff we bring into our own classroom. If the slogan for software development is to eat your own dog food, we are always eating our own dog food. These are our assignments, our "best practices."

Q. What have been your favorite subjects?

A. Some of my favorite posts so far have been ones that look at productivity. The thing that is distinctive about the site is practical application. Not just "here's a new thing that's shiny" but "here's a new thing you might be able to use in your classroom in a really pragmatic way," or "here's an application that might make your soul-killing research task easier."

Q. Do you have a lot of colleagues who could benefit from reading your blog?

A. I'm a little leery of answering that because I don't want to sound like I am throwing colleagues under a bus. But having said that, yeah. A lot of people think, "Why would I change?" People feel comfortable teaching the way they know how. I think ProfHacker could be a way of showing that the barrier of entry to this new stuff is lower than it seems. If we can do it, they can do it, too. We have the Home Depot mentality, "You can do it, we can help." It doesn't take the world to get this stuff started.

Q. Does the site drag you away from your own teaching job?

A. You can do a lot these days behind the scenes. To get the posts organized we use a wiki, and we have a grid of time slots to post to. All contributors have access to the wiki, and everyone signs up for slots. The technology lets the site become self-catering to a certain extent.