Here are cumulative file card comments, in reverse order:

Filecards W3

This was the most useful filecard yet, and it was anonymous. I think
we'll keep to that for a while. I hope to get the filecards into Classcomm
to simplify your answers. Those are, necessarily, not anonyous.

Your comment: 
If, when the book, notes, and responses on the message
board are not enough, what do you suggest we do?

Reply:
Form workgroups, go over previous problems you have solved to see
how you might proceed. Be patient with yourself, eventually you'll
"get it". Don't panic ... the homework is important for learning the
course.

Your comment:
... I have been sick for the past week ... I have been keeping my
journal well and will set up a time to gove over it with you.

Reply:
OK, but as there are more and more such cases, you will need to follow the
directions about "late" homework, see the Announcements. Briefly, print it
out, it possible, and give it to me to give to the grader for the course.
The journal is a last resort.

Your comment:
Everything seems to be going fine with the lessons. The message board 
are becoming very helpful.

Reply:
BRAVO to all you contributors to the Messages. I wish they were easier
to use. But this technology is a decade old, I think. Adding your name
helps. Thinking before you create a new thread, what you will call the 
thread, helps everybody. 

Your comment:
I'm having a hard time solving some problems. Is it possible a group 
session can be set up in the computer lab once a week?

Reply:
Sure. Rm 239 in the late afternoon is good place for this. But I propose
that the groups you form be manageably small, 3-5 people max.

Your comment:
I have posted my homework and hav not gotten a grad for it.

Reply:
First, has it been graded and "returned"? It tells you the score.
If not, maybe it's just not ready yet to be returned.
Perhaps you submitted it in an unreadable form. If all elsef fails, 
treat this and similar problems as a case of "late homework", i.e. give
me a printed out .pdf of the homework and I'll check into it. But use
this privilege sparingly, unecessary consumption of this resource 
subtracts time from other things I can do.

Your comment:
.... I am focusing on the code of the program I'm trying to upload my
homework in rather than the assignment itself.

Reply:
OK, technology is not trivial. LaTeX is a way of typesetting mathematics.
Typesetting is an example of picture (.pdf) drawn by a computer. As such
it belongs to the fifths theme of the course. The use of geometry drawing
programs (e.g. KSEG, Geometer's Sketchpad, etc) 
is the future of teaching geometry. Almost (?) none
of learned how to draw with ruler and compass in school. But 
drawing figures (as opposed to cutting and pasting from the web) is a 
proper geometrical activity. By (re)introducing this into the 
curriculum, we are restoring intellectual skills  that have all but 
disappeared, like proper penmanship, writing essays, poems and letters etc.
Twitter just is no substitute.

Your comment:
I'm not sure how to draw a picture in KSEG implementing barycentric coords.

Reply:
You need to use KSEG to construct ratios, rather than measuring off lengths.
The latter doesn't "stick" when you wiggle the figures. There was an in-class
lesson on this, on how to trisect a segment.

Your comment:
I use the .... distribution [of TeX] on my computer; hence I don't use
texWins to produce the HW but I have had no trouble writing it in LaTeX
and writing it as a .pdf.

Reply:
Bravo. Both texWins and texPad are training wheels. When you don't need them,
don't use them.

Your comment:
... for the Paint problem, I spent over an hour trying to type up my 
solutions form my notebook [journal ?]. This took so long becasue of all 
the fractions. 

Reply:
OK, fractions are a pain to type from scratch each time. TeXers soon learn
to use the cut-and-paste feature in your editor, and that editing is quicker
than typing from scratch. This is a valuable skill. You should experiment and
share with each other such short cuts to drudgery. Drudgery by itself has 
no pedagogical value. 


Filecards F1 as Comments 

Student writes: 
I am spending more time on the technology of the class than the actual 
math. Please be careful that the technology does not overshadow the math.

Reply:
Point well taken. I too would rather see geometrical questions in the 
Messages, especially about the lessons, than problems with the technology.
Here is the reason for stressing the tech early on rather than waiting until
later. The geometry to date is not only in the notes and the textbook, 
it reviews basic topics you learned in the "vector" prerequisites.
Since the homework for week 1 is not very difficult, I decided to get the 
tech issues out of the way early. 

However, I appreciate the difficulty most of you have just installing the 
required KSEG and the optional texWins. More on that later.

Student writes: 
I haven't had a lot internet time this week because it's not set up in my 
apartment yet. 

Diversity on this campus extends to total freedom on computing equipment and
prior skills. Therefore we built several levels of redundancy into the 
way a homework assignment can be done, as long as the end result is a 
a .pdf document with figures made by a KSEG construction (a .seg file). 

Classcomm:
can be accessed on any computer using any browser. You need your password.

texWins:
can be accessed on any computer using any browser. There are student labs 
at several places on campus where you can do this. Use "email notation" when
you don't know the LaTeX code.  

texPad:
can be downloaded to any computer by any browser. You can put it on a USB 
stick and carry it around with you. Have someone show you how download and
extract a .zip file on your desktop, for example, if you don't know how.

KSEG
provides precompiled downloads to pcs and macs and installs itself, 
if you follow the download procedures specific to your particular computer. 
For Linux you will have to, for MacOS you may download the source files and
recompile it yourself.  

Open Labs 
The mac lab in 239AH is configured the same way as IH24. You can use this 
lab at posted times.

Student Asks: 
"Can we do the drawings in Geometer's Sketchpad and then copy them 
into MS Word, or do we have to do them in KSEG"

Answer: 
Until you can work with KSEG and write LaTeX symbols, you may do 
this provided you save the document as a .pdf file. (See help in Word.)
so that the homework is in when due and gradeable. KSEG is part of the 
course and you will need be good at it to keep up with the in-class lessons
in the Perspective Drawing part of the course.  

Question:
Does all of our homework have to be submitted in .pdf format? Will 
Equation Editor in MS Word be OK to use?

Answer: Yes because word files are mutable. If you must use Word, save as
.pdf. The Equation Editor is very slow and cumborsome. After learning a little
TeX you will be able to write much faster not using the Equation Editor. This
comment is based on a decade of experience teaching students how to write 
mahematical documents. We can support only the optimal way of doing things
in a large course such this (except, we support PCs and Macs). So we wouldn't
be much help when you get stuck with GS or Word. 

Question:
Is there any way we can submit homework in handwritten form instead online?

Answer:
Yes. If you have missed a lot of homework deadlines due to illness or 
othere excused absences, it will be easier for me to assess your work by
reading your journal, where you have entered the homework. 

Question:
Can we have office hours? I need help getting KSEG on my computer and I have 
no idea how to create .pdfs.

Answer:
We do "have office hourse". I have posted an office visit policy on the web.
Since using KSEG on your computer instead of in the lab, where it is already
installed, is not required, though highly recommended, it has lower priority
for our limited time. Get a friend to help you, this will be a much nicer.
There are posted advice on using texWins to create the .pdf since we support
this tool. It requires you to press the appropriate buttons. In some 
wordprocessors (e.g. Word) the facility is built in. Consult "help".

Student Question:
I think that we should be allowed to use whatever math program we want to
type up our aswers, for example MathType. 

Answer:
Yes, that would be nice if it were practical. The goal is specific enough:
.pdf with mathematical symbols, figures and their construction. 
And this can be achieved in various ways. But so few of the undergraduate
students at Illinois have the skills or experience to do this, we are
obliged to be prepared to teach you how. For this, however, uniformity is
a sine qua non, since we are not given the resources to support it. 
We don't need to tell you which pencils to use, or how to read a textbook,
since that is taught in the schools.

Student Question:
teXpad would not completely load on my Dell laptop I read the lesson on 
Centroid Theorem.

Answer:
As I discovered helping this student, downloading and extracting texPad in
Vista is a major effort. Presumably due to misguided security fears. Also,
beware, Vista icons for zipped and open folders look almost the same, and 
Vista does not show you the .zip ending so you can tell with is which. Be sure
to extract texPad somewhere you can find it. Desktop!. Inside the folder are
two files, the application texPad itself, and the files it needs to work. 
Just "open = start = launch" texPad. In Vista, I found that clicking on 
anything else may open texPad partially, by not functionally.
This is the best reason for you to post such questions on the Messages 
so that fellow students who know Vista can help you.