1> Install Log Me In on your home computer. Use it from school to edit the documents you need, in the programs you need. Email them to yourself, or pay for the pro subscription and use the ftp client it has.

https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=en

I’ve used it for years and have loved it. If you can’t get the client working on your school computer, download Portable Firefox at home, copy it over to a $15 USB key you buy at Target, then use that. Portable Firefox: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

2> Your scanner is defaulting to low compression. That’s not what you want. If you can see a compression setting, you want to turn it up.

If there isn’t a way to up the compression in the scanner software. The following procedure will work on your school computer: 1. Scan picture with scanner into a jpeg 2. Open in mspaint (a default installed program on windows pc’s) 3. Save as GIF.

Won’t look as good, especially if there are lots of colors or photos. Will work fine for most pictures of text and hand drawn diagrams.

3> Get a wiki host to post notes and question and explanations. I suggest PBwiki.com’s. They are dirt simple to use with an editor that doesn’t require HTML knowledge to use. They’re also free.

4> As far as equation making goes, you have a lot of options. The one I bet is best for your situation is this one: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/math_science/latexit.html There also are wiki’s that allow this sort of equation creation.

5> On top of all of this, you can always download a USB linux distro that runs in a virtual machine, and have full control of what you’re trying to do. Here is one: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/usb-qemu.html

—Michael Langford michael.langford@rowdylabs.com

My company also produces software at greatly reduced rates for educators (in python, which runs on Mac without an install).