Consume to Create

I'm trying to teach my students both good habits for consuming content (such as effectively using Google Reader), as well as to understand the importance of creating content regularly. I think something that will help here is to think in terms of consuming in order to create.

This is actually something that was done long ago in the Renaissance. It was the sort of habit that led to literary greats like Shakespeare and Milton. People in that period were eagerly consuming all of the newly rediscovered works of classical literature that were coming out through the new medium of the printing press. But the way that they learned to read was to do so precisely so that they could then use that reading to speak or to write. (In fact, they did a lot of imitation exercises that really made a close connection between the acts of reading and writing.)

As my students struggle to follow my direction to create content daily, they should really think of this as a habit to accompany their media and information consumption. There are great benefits to combining CONSUME and CREATE in this way. For one thing, it helps you to filter your information and media sources; it gives a purpose to consumption that makes it less random. It can also temper our media hunger, which can be insatiable. If I am in the habit of posting content regularly, I have to get out of the passive, lurker mode of taking things in, and change gears into the active, creative mode of posting and publishing.

Here are some examples of consume-to-create:

Social Bookmarking - Diigo

One of the best ways for writers and researchers to make public their investigation of things is to use social bookmarking. There are several services for this. For researching, I prefer Diigo (which I first learned about a couple years ago when I saw it in action on Michael Wesch's viral video). Diigo allows one to

• keep bookmarks in the cloud
• tag bookmarks (so you and others can find them easier)
• annotate bookmarks (add comments for oneself or others)
• make bookmark lists (private or public, good for research purposes)
• join or create bookmark groups
• share bookmarks with individuals or groups
• research bookmarks
• annotate web pages (or highlight passages)
• share one's annotated/highlighted versions of web pages
• send a bookmark (or set of bookmarks) to one's personal blog 

Diigo is also a great way to employ social discovery as part of one's research process. That is to say, one can readily find people who are studying (or at least bookmarking) things within one's interests, subscribe to their content stream, or use their connections to deepen social and content research. Like other social networks, one can friend people within Diigo and begin networking that way.

Here is the link to my public Diigo bookmarks. More specifically, here is a link to my Diigo bookmarks tagged as both "diigo" and "tutorial." There you can find intro videos and a slideshow, plus helpful links to get started with using Diigo.