The standard file format for assignments is Microsoft Word. For those students who do not have access to a copy of Word, we recommend Open Office, a free program that can open and save files in Word's doc format. Open Office can be downloaded from Open Office download page.

Open Office will encourage you to use its own file format, but it is possible to save files in Microsoft Word format. Click here for instructions.
(THANKS TO @KOOL FOR THIS LINK)

The Firefox web browser is a free alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Some of the problems that IE7 users encounter can be resolved by using Firefox instead. Here's a link to download and install the latest version of Firefox

The growing proliferation of adware and spyware is causing many problems for students. There are a lot of programs available for cleaning adware and spyware from computers, but two programs are at the top of most recommended lists: Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy. No adware/spyware remover gets all the bad things off of a computer, but using these two programs together will get most of what's out there. 

Below are links for both programs. After installing, it's very important to use them to scan your computer at least once a week. Each program takes about 5 minutes to do a complete scan. If your computer is used to access the Internet every day, it would be a good idea to scan your computer daily. And it's even more important to use the update function within each program prior to scanning -- EVERY TIME!

Pop-up blockers are wonderful when you're surfing the Internet, as they help you avoid some of those irritating advertisements. However, they can get in the way of some of the online software that we use at GTDL. For example, Elluminate Live and SuccessMaker use pop-ups.