Post 3 - Documenting a Day

         This post details another assignment for my class. In this assignment I had to use four applications to document a day in the life, for which I used 12/12/19 as the subject. These four applications, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a slide deck presentation, and a database all have different functionality. I use these four types of applications regularly at work (in fact I use Word and Excel daily)They have some similarities as well, they are all made by Microsoft and are industry standard applications for business. Since they are all made by the same developer, there is a lot of standardization that can be applied across the applications. For instance all the applications have the ability to insert tables, charts, themes and smartart, and these can be copied and used across the applications. So a user could take a chart from the spreadsheet and paste it into a slide deck or word document, or a table of data from the database could be used as a table in the spreadsheet.

         Microsoft (MS) Word is a word processor, “a common computer application for creating formatted text” (Vahid, 2017). Users type text, and can format with different options like font type and size, text alignment, creating lists and making text bold, underlined, in italics. I use Word documents to create instructional documents and QRC (Quick Reference Cards). MS Excel is “a spreadsheet application is a common computer application for representing tables of data like text or numbers, for using formulas to calculate data from other data (like sums or averages), and for creating graphical charts from data” (Vahid, 2017). Excel is one of the most versatile applications I have ever worked with. I use it for analytics, to do lists, reports with charts, and creating entire business processes. But in my opinion it does not do the best job of documenting a day in the life unless you added in other data quantifiers like the task priority found in the database application. MS Access is a database program used to “collect data “organized to enable efficient information retrieval” (Vahid, 2017). I mainly use other relational database products at work like Oracle and Toad datapoint, but I am familiar with Access. I mainly use these types of programs for querying data to put together reports (for example joining invoice and customer information to providing metrics on dollars aging). MS Powerpoint is “a presentation app used to create a slideshow of text and graphics, often with animation. A slideshow consists of a series of individual "slides"” (Vahid, 2017).

         Personally, I found the word document the best software for documenting information about my day, although if I was giving a presentation about it I would want to use the Powerpoint presentation software. One of the challenges many people face is using Powerpoint like a word doc and then reading their slides to their audience during their presentation, instead of using the slides to accent and expand on their verbal presentation.

References:

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from  zybooks.zyante.com/