Good connections

I'm so excited. Yesterday, for maybe the first time in my children's academic careers, I got an e-mail from a teacher. Oh, sure, I'd had some correspondence a while back with the man who gave my daughter trombone lessons at my kids' elementary school, and with the behavioral therapist who observed my son, but correspondence with a teacher in an academic subject that actually tells me what my child should be studying and offers the possibility of asking for advice from time to time? It's a first. This teacher also told me she has a Web site on which she posts information, although she's yet to give me the url, and two other teachers have given me their e-mail addresses and asked for mine. It's a brave new educational world, I'll tell you, and a long way from the days when I couldn't even write a note to my daughter's teacher without the principal having to read it and sign off. On the other hand, I'm bumping into the limits of computer awareness in my job as coordinator of library volunteers at my son's school. I had big plans going into this that I could conduct all library business by e-mail, maybe setting up a Yahoo! group or giving a little bit of my Web site over to schedules and guidelines and other need-to-know information that often got lost in the bottom of bookbags when sent home via children. I eagerly asked for everyone's e-mail address when they volunteered ... and found out that less than a third even had one. No e-mail! How do they live?