Teachmix

Below is my article for this year's CCCC-IP Annual. I refer to some exciting stuff going on in our field such as http://writingspaces.org/:

The issue of access is one of the main reasons our field has held a prolonged interest in copyright and intellectual property matters. We want everyone to have access to education, art, science, and culture. We want open-access publishing in general, for our scholarship and for teaching resources. But we especially empathize with college students and their diverse financial situations; many are, as we all know, accruing student loan debt, juggling class schedules and work schedules, and, in some cases, supporting their families. Admittedly, many others are racking up high bar tabs, paying high membership dues to fraternities or sororities, and buying expensive clothes, but we maintain concern for the students who are struggling to pay their bills and whose financial future is especially uncertain. Such concern means that we -- especially those of us who, like me, are Writing Program Administrators -- often agonize about our responsibility to select textbooks that are both affordable and pedagogically sound and appropriate for our students. In this paper, I will describe two developments from the year 2010 that pertain to intellectual property and our field. One is the publication of a report titled A Cover-to-Cover Solution: How Open Textbooks are the Path to Textbook Affordability by a student activist group. The other is the publication of volume I of Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, an open textbook for undergraduate writing courses.

Active since 1973 (or earlier), PIRGS have organized campaigns on a variety of issues including student loan debt, the environment, and, since 2005, affordable textbooks. Since 2005, Student PIRGs (Public Interest Research Group) has had a "Make Textbooks Affordable" campaign to raise awareness about the "tipping point expense" of textbooks in higher education -- a cost that can potentially mean the difference between getting an education and not getting one. In 2010, they released a report titled, "A Cover-to-Cover Solution: How Open Textbooks are the Path to Textbook Affordability," which was based on survey research of over 1000 students on ten campuses. The researchers review some of the problems with the current textbook market, problems that we, as writing teachers, already know about: frequent new editions of books, and shrink-wrap packaging of proprietary software with books (requiring students to buy new books in order to get the CD or access code for the software). Also reviewed are some of the cost-saving strategies currently in place: textbook rental, resale, and e-books. Student PIRGs calls these measures "a good start," but they argue that open textbooks are a more sustainable strategy for keeping textbooks affordable in the long term. The Student PIRGs research found that open textbooks that give students the option to buy a print copy or download a free online version, like the Flat World Knowledge publishing model, will best solve the economic problem of textbook cost. The research found that 75% of students preferred to have print textbooks, so online-only book options are not ideal. Book rental is not generally an attractive solution either, as the Student PIRGs research found that most students want to buy some books but rent others. The research group then calculated the savings each current option (renting, e-textbooks, and e-books for e-readers such as the Nook or Kindle) offers. They found that book rental saves students about 33%, reducing their book expense to $602 per year, on average. E-books and e-reader books fared worse, offering savings of 8% and 1% respectively. In a dramatic contrast, open textbooks can cut students' book expenses by 80% while still providing students with choices to accommodate their preferences: "Print copies come in black and white and color, softcover and hardcover, and students can self-print part or all of the text. Digital copies are typically free, and can be accessed online or offline from a variety of devices including e-readers, laptops and smart phones" (12). One of the most interesting findings of the study is that 76% of students would pay a small fee to go toward compensating authors of free and open textbooks (13).

I notice three points that are not made in the Student PIRGs report, two minor and one major. First the minor points: the report criticized textbook publishers' practice of coming out with frequent new editions without substantive changes -- and I agree with this criticism -- and they conclude, for a variety of reasons, that using open textbooks is the best solution to the problem of book costs. It should be noted that with open textbooks, the new editions issue is no longer a problem. The textbook author or publisher can make improvements and updates to the book as needed, even if it's more frequently than every two or three years, and the cost of a new edition for the student is negligible; even if he or she already bought a print copy of a previous edition, the student can view online or self-print only the material in the newer edition. The second minor point I noticed wasn't made is that book rental and buying used would also be options for print copies of open textbooks, likely saving print-preference students even more money. I don't know who sets the costs of book rental, but in order to create a more attractive option for students (and thus make money), the cost-setter would have to price the rentals lower than the cost of buying the books outright. The same goes for buying used: barring special circumstances, like autographed or rare editions, used copies are always going to be less expensive than new copies. Students who prefer print copies can buy them simply in order to satisfy their preference, then decide later if they want to own the books permanently or not. If they choose, they can re-sell the book and get some of their money back, offsetting both their net cost and the cost to the next student who uses the book. Because open textbooks are not published for profit, there would be no serious attempts to undermine the sale of used books, and the used print open textbooks market could flourish. The major point not addressed in the Student PIRGs report is university bookstore markup, which is typically 30% of a book's retail cost. This percentage may go into a university's operating budget, as it does at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where I teach, making the overall textbook-cost issue less simple than it appears, especially with deep budget cuts for higher education. Certainly if university bookstores order print copies of open textbooks to stock for students to buy, the university bookstores will still apply the markup, and the operating budgets will get that money. However, the fewer dollars a book costs, the fewer dollars 30% of that amount will be. I don't mean to suggest that there's actually an incentive to select more expensive textbooks, but bookstore markup is an factor that enters into my own thinking about the economics of course textbooks. On a related note, the Student PIRGs report alludes to the 2010 provisions of the Higher Education Opportunity Act regarding making textbook costs public. Universities that receive federal aid are supposed to publicize the costs of their classes' textbooks. My understanding of the law -- what I've done for our First-Year Writing Program site -- is that universities must disclose what their university bookstores charge for each book as well as the ISBN of each book for purposes of comparison shopping. While I agree that sharing this information benefits students and had already planned to post this information prior to hearing about the law, I have to wonder how much our university, so underfunded already, stands to lose from reduced bookstore revenue.

The field of Rhetoric and Writing Studies currently has six options for open textbooks. The first, the Rhetoric and Composition WikiBook, was published in 2005 and written by Matt Barton and students at St. Cloud State University. It is not only open-access and freely available to print (permission granted under its Attribution/ShareAlike terms); it is also an ongoing project that students in writing classes can contribute to themselves. The second open textbook option for writing teachers is Steven Krause's book titled The Process of Research Writing, which he published in 2007 under an Attribution/Noncommercial/ShareAlike Creative Commons license. Both this book and the WikiBook can be viewed in HTML format and as PDFs for no cost and self-printed by students. Students may, depending on their universities' policies, be able to use university printers and supplies for this purpose. It's the third option, I believe, that is the most in alignment with the Student PIRGs' recommendations for open textbook publication because students can buy a print version of the book. The first volume of Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing was published in 2010, the second volume close behind in January 2011. I am on the editorial board of this book series. Under the licensing terms, Attribution/Noncommercial/No Derivative Works, students may download a PDF of the books free of charge and self-print the whole book or selected chapters, but unlike the other two, Writing Spaces is available for purchase as a bound volume from Parlor Press. Through Parlor Press's web site, students can buy volume 1 for $23.00 (price is the same on Amazon), and volume 2 for $25.00. The Student PIRGs report mentions the importance of accommodating students' diverse preferences (especially the majority's preference for print), and it points out that Flat World Knowledge is a company that follows this model of selling print copies but offering free downloads. Or at least it appears to follow this model. The fourth, fifth, and sixth options for Rhetoric and Writing Studies are Writing for Success by Scott McLean, The Flat World Knowledge Handbook for Writers by Miles McCrimmon, and Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis by Randall Fallows. The first two of these are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Use-Share Alike license. The third is also under a Creative Commons license, but it will be available online later this month, so I cannot view the title page to see the specific kind of license. Flat World Knowledge claims to offer students the opportunity to read the book online for free, buy an electronic version for the Kindle or Nook, or buy a print copy. The "read online for free" option, however, is not as open as one might assume. On the sites for these books, I see no link to a downloadable PDF of the book. I can only read the book in HTML format or as an embedded PDF in a PDF viewer. At the bottom of the screen is a button with "Print this chapter: $2.49." Now, under the terms of the Creative Commons license, I could buy a copy of the book (or have a desk copy sent to me), scan the whole book or selected chapters into PDF, upload the documents to my course site, and make them available for students -- so that they can view them without an internet connection or print them at only the price of paper and toner. But Flat World Knowledge makes this option quite difficult. The most truly open and sustainable textbook models are the first three options: The Rhetoric and Composition Wikibook, The Process of Research Writing, and Writing Spaces.

I am impressed with Student PIRGs' dedication to lowering the cost of higher education, and I'm happy to see the 2010 HEOA provisions about textbook costs. Because students are a captive market and cannot choose their own textbooks, I like that they are becoming more aware of options within their current constraints. Intellectual property is an economic issue, of course; publishers buy a textbook author's copyright and make copies, and students buy the copies at a high price -- on average, each student spends $900.00 a year on them, according to the Government Accountability Office (qtd. in Student PIRGs 1). I would like to conclude with some thoughts on our (professors' and Writing Program Administrators') options and constraints. The genres of writing textbooks are, as most of us know, readers, rhetorics, and handbooks. We have six options for open textbooks, three of which are rhetorics, two of which are handbooks, and one of which combines the qualities of a rhetoric and a reader. We don't yet have cohesive open textbooks that fall into the genre of reader (for classes that don't take a Writing About Writing approach), but as far as books about academic writing and the writing and research processes are concerned, we have a few open textbook alternatives, and we should explore these. I recommend class-testing one or more of these books -- a teacher in my writing program class-tested a few chapters in Writing Spaces with positive results -- and doing local studies to discover campus-specific implementation issues.

Krause, Steven. The Process of Research Writing. 2007. Web. 6 March 2011. Lowe, Charles, and Pavel Zemliansky. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Volume 1. 2010. Web. 6 March 2011. Lowe, Charles, and Pavel Zemliansky. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Volume 2. 2011. Web. 6 March 2011. Rhetoric and Composition WikiBook. 2011. Web. 6 March 2011. Student PIRGs. A Cover-to-Cover Solution: How Open Textbooks Are the Path to Textbook Affordability. Student PIRGs, 2010. 6 March 2011.

During this year's Computers and Writing Online Conference, Collaborvention 2011, Writing Spaces is sponsoring a "writing sprint" to create a Web Writing Style Guide for undergraduate writing classes. From The Writing Spaces Web Writing Style Guide Writing Sprint CFP, 

It’s becoming a common feature in open source project conferences and unconferences alike: the code sprint. Open source unconference attendees get together and produce a much needed programming resource for their community by the end of their conference. Digital rhetoricians can do this, too, by focusing on building teaching resources we could use in the classroom. Instead of a code sprint, we can conduct a writing sprint.

Over the duration of Collaborvention 2011, Writing Spaces will host a collaborative writing event to produce a Creative Commons-licensed web writing guide for undergraduate writers. We invite all writing teachers--graduate students and faculty alike--with experience incorporating writing for the web in their classes (e.g., first year writing, business communication, web design, multimedia writing, etc.) or who write for the web regularly themselves, to participate in the construction of this open educational resource.

The first stage of the writing sprint will involve a "garage band style jam via Google Docs" to produce a solid draft. Then, using Google Docs' new discussion features, the conference participants will review and refine the manuscript. Following the f2f Computers and Writing 2011 Conference, we'll do a quick copy editing phase and publish the Web Writing Style Guide in HTML, PDF, and epub. 

This recent op-ed at the New York Times argues that there's an important place in first year writing for composing short texts: 

I don’t expect all my graduates to go on to Twitter-based careers, but learning how to write concisely, to express one key detail succinctly and eloquently, is an incredibly useful skill, and more in tune with most students’ daily chatter, as well as the world’s conversation. The photo caption has never been more vital.

This week, the Digital Rhetoricians cover Dennis Baron's "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies" and Danielle DeVoss and Annette c. Rosati's "It wasn't me, was it?" Plagiarism and the Web."

Download it here.

Giga OM reports that Google Docs has added a whole slew of new features for discussion and commenting on documents. For example, 

Users can hold ongoing threaded conversations within a document using time stamps and profile pictures and @mentions, similar to Facebook. They can easily add people to the conversation and ultimately remove the conversation from view on the document by resolving the issue.

The new apps are being pushed out to users over the next few days. The features will not be available on existing documents, only new ones. I just tried it, and it worked for me. Maybe it's already available for you, too. 

Learn more from Google's promotional video:

http://computersandwriting.org/collaborvention-2011-cfp

Having seen a surge of interest for an online conference that would take Computers and Writing in a new, more collaborative and less hierarchical direction, we announce Collaborvention 2011: A Computers and Writing Unconference.  As with successful face-to-face unconferences, we hope to see collaboration and synthesis without formal proposals, acceptances, or a program set in stone before the online conference begins. This activity will take place during two windows.

1. Connections window: Starting immediately, participants can toss out ideas, put together events and connect with collaborators. We expect most of that activity to happen in cyberspace, using the #cwuncon hashtag, on listservs like techrhet and wpa-l, through collaborvention groups in social networks, through local collaborations, and in any other ways that will help the conference achieve a critical mass of interest and participation.
2. Unconference window: Between April 22nd and May 13th (prior to the f2f Computers and Writing conference) and between May 22nd and May 30th (after the f2f conference), the unconference window will open. Events during the unconference might take the form of a hosted conversation, a showcase of a project or activity, a presentation, or really anything. We also hope to see links develop between the unconference and the f2f conference on May 19-22.

As you begin planning your event with others, you'll want to review the Instructions for Submitting to Collaborvention 2011.

http://computersandwriting.org/collaborvention-2011-submissions

The instructions will provide you with a link to the submission form for adding your event to the Collaborvention 2011 Event Schedule.

If you have questions about the unconference, the support documents offer quite a bit of additional information.

http://computersandwriting.org/collaborvention-2011-help

We look forward to seeing your participation!

http://computersandwriting.org/collaborvention-2011-home

The Collaborvention 2011 Facilitators

Via Slashdot comes this Katamari Hack for Google Chrome bookmarklet that lets you play Katamari Democracy with the text on any web page. No really. It does work. If you want to see it get really big, go to Lorem Ipsum Sum and have the website generate 100 paragraphs for the ball to eat up.

The bookmarklet uses HTML5 and CSS3. And yes, it plays that Katamari Democracy music that we all know and love. Play the game in your browser at work with the volume turned up. Annoy your coworkers and colleagues. 

TECHNOLOGY INNOVATOR AWARD

Deadline for nominations: 18 April 2011

The CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication will honor an innovator in our community at the 2011 Computers and Writing Conference at the University of Michigan, and we need your help to identify a person who has pushed our field regarding excellence in teaching, more rigorous scholarship, and deeper levels of service. Among other qualities, this year's innovator will be the person whom you recognize as having done the most to help other teachers use computer-mediated learning and teaching and has served as a mentor to those new to computers and composition.

This year's recipient should be a person who pushes the envelope, who moves us beyond the cutting edge to the bleeding edge, who is willing to open the technological Pandora's Box knowing full well that the challenges and work that we'll meet as that Box is opened will strengthen our community and make our classes better. The recipient of the Technology Innovator Award might be referred to as an outstanding leader or an electronic pioneer who calls our assumptions into question, urging us to engage in an active search for new and exciting ways to accomplish our pedagogical goals in the composition classroom.

Nominees for the award can be of any academic rank (student, contract, staff, tenure-line or tenured faculty, etc.) as well as independent scholars.

CRITERIA FOR THE AWARD

The recipient of the Technology Innovator Award

• has made a significant groundbreaking or foundational contribution to the field of computers and composition
• demonstrates outstanding teaching achievements with computer technologies
• provides on-going support and encouragement to the community, in particular to those who teach with computer technologies
• contributes to the field through scholarship and publication in print and electronic media (including such media as journal articles, discussion lists, webtexts/hypertexts, text/book authorship, and editorial work)

NOMINATION PROCESS

While we ask that you keep nomination letters to 750 to 1000 words, we do encourage you to include or link to CVs and supplementary material. Do keep in mind that the more thorough the nominations are, the better the individual's chances. Stated another way: Nominations consisting of only a name, a few sentences, and a link to a CV may not stand up against more formal, detailed nominations. We encourage single letters of recommendation crafted and signed by individuals or groups instead of multiple letters for a single nominee.

• Nomination letters should be kept to 750-1000 words.
• A nomination should consist of an email that includes specific details on the nominee's award qualifications. Nominations should contain information on accessing materials that demonstrate the nominee's work. Attachments are acceptable. No WordPerfect files please.
• Nominations can be submitted by an individual, a group of individuals, or a professional organization (e.g., the Assembly on Computers on English, the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the CCCC Caucus on Intellectual Property and Composition, etc.).
• Self nominations are encouraged.
• Nominations will be kept active on a two-year rotation; therefore nominations submitted in 2010 will also be considered for the 2011 award, and any nomination submitted for the 2011 award will also be considered in 2012. If you want to nominate someone and you aren't sure whether they were nominated last year, please contact John Walter at johnpwalter[at]gmail[dot]com for clarification/confirmation.

WHERE AND HOW TO SEND

Please title the email: Tech Innovator Award: NOMINEE'S LASTNAME

Send nominations via email to John Walter at johnpwalter[at]gmail[dot]com

Deadline for nominations: 18 April 2011

PAST WINNERS

The following outstanding members of the computers and writing community have already received the Technology Innovator Award. (Past winners should not be re-nominated.)

The judging committee is typically comprised of the five most-recent-years' past winners.

2010: Nick Carbone
2009: Danielle DeVoss& Will Hochman (tie)
2008: Janice Walker
2007: Kris Blair
2006: Mike Palmquist
2005: Richard Selfe
2004: Carolyn Handa
2003: Charles Moran
2002: John Slatin
2001: Lisa Gerrard
2000: Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe
1999: Fred Kemp

Please send questions, comments, and nomination submissions to John Walter, 7Cs Tech Innovator Award Coordinator, <johnpwalter[at]gmail[dot]com>

In his editorial today, All the Aggregation That’s Fit to Aggregate, Bill Keller, Executive Editor of The New York Times, had this to say about AOL's acquisition of The Huffinton Post: 

Last month, when AOL bought The Huffington Post for $315 million, it was portrayed as a sign that AOL is moving into the business of creating stuff — what we used to call writing or reporting or journalism but we now call “content.” Buying an aggregator and calling it a content play is a little like a company’s announcing plans to improve its cash position by hiring a counterfeiter.

Ariana Huffington, of course, responded later today. Quite a heated discussion, an interesting one given Huffington's success at building "a journalistic hybrid combining the best aspects of traditional print newspapers with the best of what the Web brings to the table" (her words).

As Brain Pickings points out, this comic from Roscott, Inc., calls attention to the lack of citation common to resuse of content on the Web. Yes. "Sharing Is Awesome":

Call for Proposals

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy. September 22-24, 2011

Deadline: April 15, 2011

Location: Coastal Georgia Center in the historic District of Savannah

Please submit your proposal via the website. The online submission link of the website will provide all of the information you need to create and submit a proposal. 

http://ceps.georgiasouthern.edu/conted/infolit.html

For more information, contact:

Janice Reynolds

912-478-1755

janreyn@georgiasouthern.edu

"That's really all this is. It's people lending books. And you can't look on it as a lost sale."

Hi, folks. The Digital Rhetoricians (soon to be Kairosnews Podcast?) are back with another episode of the #1 podcast in The Computers & Composition Community. In this episode, we talk about two essays in the "Foundations" section of the Computers in the Composition Classroom sourcebook: Richard Ohmann's "Literacy, Technology, and Monopoly Capital" and Cynthia L. Selfe and Richard J. Selfe's "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones.

Download the episode here.

In a purely self-indulgent move I have started a podcast and blog called Not Your Mama's Gamer which focuses on video games from a feminist perspective. I co-host the podcast with two smart and funny women (Alex Layne and Sarah White) and we've been having a ball. We have done 3 episodes and quite a few blog posts already and our fourth podcast is coming up this week. Feel free to check us out and let us know what you think.

Whenever I think about the OER movement and principles that could be important to it, I keep coming back to how open source might inform our understanding of OER development.

In fact, I believe it’s possible to see two different approaches to OER commons growth underlying most OER initiatives (although, sometimes there is a mixture of both):

1. Emergence. When teachers are encouraged to simply release the materials that they produce into the commons under CC licenses, whether through posting their materials online themselves or in some institutional repository, this seems to depend more on an organic evolutionary development model for expanding the OER commons. The principle seems to be that when content is released into the commons, new variations will emerge that improve upon the original, either through increased content development or improved adaptability, modularity, or usability. Plant enough seeds, and mutations will enventually occur in subsequent generations. 
2. Community-Based Development. When groups of people come together with common interest to form communities for building OER, then I believe we start to see stronger commons-based-peer-production benefits, such as exemplified in the success of large open source projects (e.g., Linux, Firefox, Drupal) and the Wikipedia community. 

While I don’t disagree with teachers releasing curricular resources they create as OER, I do question whether or not it’s a good use of resources to fund and develop opencourseware initiatives where educators are often working alone to create OER. Based on what open source development has demonstrated, we might better grow the commons if we prioritize community-based development. Here are some lessons we might take from open source:

• We can generally create better resources collaboratively than we can individually.
• People like to “belong” and are more likely to engage in creating resources and/or put in more effort by joining with others than when working alone.
• The synergy we gain through collaboration will not only influence the creation of resources, but the synergy will also help us to feel more strongly a part of a community with similar ideals.
• Educators can learn more about specific disciplinary knowledge and/or pedagogy from collaborating with each other.
• We can learn more from each other about useful resources that can aid in the creation of resources; we might avoid duplication of effort.
• People new to creating resources can learn strategies for the effective creation of resources from more experienced members of the open education community.
• Through collaboration, we are more likely to create resources that suit a wider context beyond our individual needs or resources that are more adaptable. Better usability will result.
• When we collaborate to produce resources, we have more people aware of what was created and promoting its use.

 Are blogs really "waning" like a New York Times headline recently stated?  In a blog post by Scott Rosenberg, he explores the misleading headline and what really lies behind the statistics. 

Yes, the number of teen bloggers dropped in half from 2006 to 2009.  Yes, the number of adult bloggers age 18-33 dipped a bit.  The article, and Rosenberg, point to social media sites such as Twitter, pulling away bloggers for quick "mini-blogs" easily posted by the younger generation.

But this hardly marks "the end" of blogs.  In fact, the same study showed the number of adults bloggers over the age of 30 actually rose from 7 to 11 percent within the same time period, and that percentage jumped to 14 percent in 2010. This, according to Rosenberg, is a "phenomenal fact" as 14 PERCENT of adults are writing in public. And while this number may settle around 10 percent in the future, it still remains an amazing feature of technology that this number of adults are writing, AND writing for the public. 

Recently, Ryan Cordell responded to notions of "grading jail" in his blog, "Avoid 'Grading Jail' through Course Writing Contracts." In his blog, Cordell explains how he uses student contracts in his writing courses and details the advantages and disadvantages to the approach. The primary benefits that he lists are student ownership of their writing and the ability of students to tailor their accademic commitments to their personal lives. For instructors, the benefits boil down to reduced stacks of papers to grade and by extension less personal stress while grading. He cautions, however, that the approach may not work for all classes, nor all grades; specifically, he believes that freshmen may lack the skills needed to plan their course work.  While Cordell has had very positive experiences with student contracts, I imagine the personal style of the instructor plays a very important part in the success of such a venture.

I just so happened to stumble upon an article this week when I was doing some freestyle internet surfage. Alex Reid had something interesting things to say about the notion of "DH," or what he now proposes be called the "digital humanities." Apparently "digital humanities" was being used interchangeably with "humanities computing," and Reid found the terminological switch to be a rhetorical move, and a commendable one, adding that "I don't think anyone can make digital humanities equate with humanities computing any longer."

What does everyone think? Did anyone else use these two terms interchangeably and/or confuse the terms when waxing theoretical, and are you impressed with my usage of "waxing theoretical"? If so, why?

/waxing off

In an article written by Natalie Houston she rhapsodizes about the art of resorting to drafting with the pencil. How about you? Like Natalie, I too had my brush with the typewriter. Having grown up on the latter cuspe of the pencil and typewriter age, personally I found being released by from the tyranny of the typewriter a relief. It probably had to do with trying to realign the text after removing a page of laborious text from the platen [sp?]. Perhaps the pencil suffered from a certain guilt by association with me. Later in the article the author talks about how our brains may actually be wired to write more naturally with pen and paper, using a keyboard to write akin to using too many resources on a computer. So what do you think? What's your experience?

Ok. Good intentions aside, I think my son would be horrified if he had been named after "Facebook," "YouTube," or some other social media site, regardless of the reasons:

Egyptian father names his daughter “Facebook” after revolution

Most of those unusual hippy names babies were given in the late 60's-early 70's sound oh so much better.