Writing a joint article using the internet - Perth WA - Dunedin NZ

I have been wanting to publish an article about the growing trend and use of the Internet. It always astonishes me how much information is out there and how many women seek out this information or use the Internet to spread information about pregnancy, childbirth, freebirth, unattended birth, medicalised care, good & poor care received from midwives. I am also perplexed or surprised at how many midwives still do not utilise this resource or are afraid of it - 'the Internet' or cyber world as I like to call it.

It seemed a logical step to take when I asked Sarah Stewart to co-publish with me, Sarah has been a great support to me since I began blogging in January of 2008. Today I contacted Sarah via Skype to discuss the next step, which has been to create a document using google docs,(you do need to have a current google account) by which we can both write and edit our article, it is so great, I can't believe it is so easy, off course once you know how! It was so amazing to talk to Sarah after blogging for 10 months we have finally spoken. I find it unbelievable that technology takes us this far, here I am in Perth WA and Sarah is in Dunedin NZ, five hours of time between us and we spoke and saw each other as if we were face to face - it is really amazing.

My first task is to brainstorm all the things I'm interested in, as I have already mentioned some of them, Sarah did point out to me that we could write several papers and culling will be very important.
This is a familiar problem for me - too many ideas, that's where Sarah will keep me focused.

Watch this space to see how we go ..............

Cyber communication - continues

Over the weekend I was catching up with some leisure reading if you can classify the weekend paper as such. I came across an interesting case that occured in the US

Woman charged after MySpace 'joke' goes tragically wrong
A brief synopsis of the story -

A 49 year old mother has been charged over a MySpace hoax that ended with her 13 year old neighbour committing suicide after being rebuffed by a fictitious boy. Several adults including the 49 year woman chatted on line with the girl creating the fictitious relationship, the co-conspirators'chatted with the girl on MySpace and gleaned information from online exchanges to 'torment, harass, humiliate and embarrass' the girl. The woman who created the joke felt that it had gone to far so ended the fictitious relationship by saying the 'the world would be a better place without the girl in it" The message was supposed to end the relationship and so it did. The 13 year old girl committed suicide by hanging herself.

West Australian p 30 Saturday 17 May 2008

What these people did not know is that this girl was being treated for attention deficit disorder and depression. This was an incredibly cruel and malicious joke which contributed to the death of a child someone so vulnerable. The woman has been charged in relation to the death of the child. Watch this space to see the outcome........

This is an exteme case of cyber bulling, it highlights that often we do not know what people's psyhological status is when we are communicating on line. All the more reason to remember that it payes to be considerate and not malicious, rude or foul mouthed when communicating on line.
Picture from:
http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/03/01/svYOUTUBE_wideweb__470x468,0.jpg&imgrefurl=http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/613&h=468&w=470&sz=46&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=3nzR5gfGq8eimM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=129&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcyberbullying%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4HPAB_enAU248AU248%26sa%3DN