When I agreed to be a room parent for my son’s Kindergarten class, I knew full well that my work schedule didn’t accommodate a lot of hanging around on the sidewalk talking to fellow parents about the upcoming class parties.  After speaking with the Kindergarten teacher, I learned that much of the class party planning could be accomplished through email and phone calls between me and the parents.  Nice.

Wait, did I say nice?

Being a blogger and administrator whose job requires technology, I looked to the web for some help in managing the sign-up sheet for party supplies.  I found www.signupgenious.com  that did exactly what I wanted - a premade Halloween Party template that allowed me to add the needed items.   People sign-up for items, preventing duplicates, long email replies, and return phone calls.  Perfect.

Not perfect.

It’s been a week and not one parent of the 24 has used the online sign-up sheet.  But here’s what has happened.

It was a little awkward when my co-worker mentioned that her hairdresser also has a child in my son’s class.  What a crazy party planning mom we’re dealing with!  “There’s this mom who thinks she’s something and created a website for the Halloween Party.  She must not have anything else to do.”  Yeah, that was me.

I received two emails from parents who couldn’t figure out how to use the sign-up sheet.   One mom “couldn’t figure out the password part.”  “I’m not very tech savvy,” she said.

The point

How can adults be avoiding web 2.0?  Who can get by in today’s world without having some intuitivism with technology applications?  These are parents to five year-olds.  Isn’t this the prime web 2.0 demographic?

I suppose the upside is that I can bury my self-consciousness that my friends, co-workers, and acquaintances will find out what I really think by discovering my twitter account or my blogs.