I set out to document a typical day in my life using common office applications, including a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation. Here are my thoughts on the role of each application based on what I experienced on this project.
Word
Processor
Using the word processor to create my journal proved to
be relatively simple. I used MS Word for
this assignment and have been using it for many years and have seen it mature
over time. MS Word is one of the most
popular word processors globally, followed by Google Docs (Melendez, 2019). Much like other word processors, MS Word
provides the user with many formatting tools to modify the appearance and
layout of any document. It is somewhat
confining as to the layout as it tries to force users to stick with traditional
layouts for letters or memorandums. It
is versatile, but I find it more challenging to use for complex layouts. Word processors today have many features that
attempt to provide the user with functionality found in other applications,
like tables or graphics, but with some limitations.
Spreadsheet
I used MS Excel as the spreadsheet application to sum the total time spent on my daily activities and to calculate the percentage of the day each task represented. While MS Excel has many features similar to MS Word to format its content, it is primarily used for organizing data in columns and rows. This data stored in cells identified by its column and row can be manipulated or searched more effortlessly than in a word processor or a presentation application. Spreadsheets are traditionally used for creating workbooks containing tables that can be easier reorganized, counted, summed, or averaged, among many other functions. Using it to perform the addition and percentage calculations proved very easy and a task that would have been difficult in the word processor and presentation applications.
Presentation
The presentation part of this week’s assignment was
fun. I used MS PowerPoint as the
presentation application for this task. Presentation applications like MS PowerPoint
are not intended for writing lengthy documents or reports. As its category implies, they are intended to
be used in presentations, and events, then good presenters only use the content
of the slides to help guide the conversation.
The power behind a presentation app like MS PowerPoint is that the slide
canvas doesn’t have any layout limitations.
As it is not intended for print, its entire canvas can be used to
present content. Another great feature
of MS PowerPoint is its ability to introduce animations and transitions that
add another element of flair to the presentation document to help capture the audience's
attention. MS PowerPoint is undoubtedly
the proper application for visually presenting colorful and animated content to
a present audience; however, it can also be used for smaller in-person or
virtual presentations using printed materials.
The only drawback is that it will not take advantage of the animations
or transitions only available to the electronically presented version of the
slides.
Database
While we did not get to use a database for our journal
assignment this week, we did cover the subject in the lecture. A database is an organized collection of data
stored electronically in a computer system.
Much like spreadsheets, data within most databases are modeled in rows
and columns, but databases store these as tables. Tables are then used for processing and
querying the data contained in tables.
While many of the processing tasks available to the database exist in
spreadsheets, databases are far more efficient at processing tasks, especially
when presented with large amounts of data.
Databases can also be relational, which means that they hold multiple
tables related to each other by data contained in a field referred to as a “
Primary Key.”
Conclusion
The word processor, the spreadsheet, and the presentation
applications were all functional at creating an agenda and presenting the data
in a visually appealing format; however, MS Word is the best-suited application
for this purpose. Using MS Word proved
to be the most efficient way to prepare a visually attractive journal that contained
all of the daily activities in a single letter-sized document. While it wasn’t as quick to prepare as the
spreadsheet was, it presented more content, and the objectives for the
spreadsheet part of the assignment were entirely different.
Melendez, S. (2019, April 24).
Examples of Word Processors. Small Business - Chron.com. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-word-processors-66990.html.
What is a database? (n.d.).
Oracle.Com. Retrieved May 9, 2021, from https://www.oracle.com/database/what-is-database/
zyBooks. (2017). ZyBooks.Com.
https://learn.zybooks.com/zybook/ASHFORDINT100AcademicYear2018/chapter/5/section/4
Hugo - Over the years Microsoft Office Word has emerged as a universal Word processor for almost 80% of the world's population. It has a bundle of capabilities that suits professions of all kinds.
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Dr. Flores