Reflection on Computer Applications

"A world without Word, Excel, or PowerPoint is not one I wanna live in..."

The arrival of computer programs and their various applications have made our lives much easier over the years. The standard handwritten letter has been replaced with the Word application or even email. Meetings have been streamlined with PowerPoint presentations. It’s much easier to crunch numbers and share them in plug-and-play formats with Excel sheets.

This week, we were given the opportunity to work with some computer applications from Microsoft that revolutionized the way we work and play.

Microsft Word is a word processor that is multifaceted. It allows for creating standard letters on the computer, forming creative posters and brochures, and much more. The next time I go job hunting, chances are I will create my resume with the Word application. Excel is a spreadsheet program that allows users to calculate and solve many mathematical problems. Visual features like graphs, charts, and tables make the output information all the easier to digest. Week 2 also included an activity that allowed us to create a journal entry in Word and then import the hours spent doing various things on a daily basis into Excel. The application enabled us to quickly break these numbers down into percentages for a numerical valuation of how we spend our days, paired with an automated pie chart for visual representation. With Microsoft PowerPoint, we are able to create presentations on the computer. Presentations are a great way to share information in concise ways, create animations or even create games. Going through Microsft’s user-ready templates, I got a glimpse into the potential of PowerPoint, which is seemingly grounded only by one’s creativity.

As for documenting my daily process, Word was the most appropriate application. Since I was writing about my day in the format of a journal entry, it proved to be the most effective for that purpose. Word does best for writing and reading applications whilst Excel and Powerpoint are mathematical and visual mediums respectively.