This week’s tasks set us to experiment with tracking “A Day in My Life” with various applications so that we could experience the functionality of each. The applications are Microsoft Word, a word processor; Microsoft Excel, a spreadsheet application; and Microsoft PowerPoint, a presentation application, along with considering databases. Using each program for different tasks with the same focus can help highlight the pros and cons of an application. When setting out on a task, it is important to choose the correct application that fits your goals.
The first task was using a word processor to write a journal. See my detailed post about the word processor task here. Word processors are good for creating and editing text files, especially formatted text (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019). In the case of writing a journal entry, formatting like bold was useful for making the dates of each entry stand out, along with using italics to highlight thoughts that need to stand out among the rest of the text. A word processor is best suited for written formats, like telling the narrative of my day. Images can be inserted into a word processor document, but a presentation would be better suited to handle image-heavy information.
The second task for “A Day in My Life” involved using a spreadsheet. See my detailed post about the Spreadsheet task here. Spreadsheets let the user enter information into a table and then do calculations based on formulas and values in the table (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019). The spreadsheet let me list and compare the hours spent on each activity. The spreadsheet program used, Microsoft Excel, has built-in options to create different kinds of graphs based on the entered data. Inserting a pie chart created an easy visualization allowing for a comparison of the size of the segments to each other and the rest of my day. While the cells of a spreadsheet can contain text, the formatting of text in a spreadsheet is not a robust as a word processor. Spreadsheets are ideal for working with numbers, formulas, and graphs.
Task three was creating a presentation based on the journaled day. Presentations allow for a mixture of figures and text and many modern presentation applications allow for animation or movement of the presentation elements (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019). One best practice around presentation text is keeping to no more than 6 lines of text and each line should be around 8 words long each with disregard for complete sentences while keeping the concept intact (Sharma, et al., 2022). So, although presentations can contain text, this text is only meant to be a high-level summary of important points. It is important to remember that presentations are often intended as a tool to aid the audience in understanding the information being presented. Unless the slides are intended to fully stand on their own, they do not replace the presenter themselves.
While these tasks only focused on one day, if I was going to continue this process for an extended period, I would likely get a database involved. A database would allow me to store a large amount of journaled and recorded data so that I can later retrieve it, but other applications are needed to display it (Vahid & Lysecky, 2019). If weeks of data regarding how many hours each day was spent on a task, then could enter that information into a spreadsheet application and display summaries, comparisons, and trends related to time devoted to a task.
Each of the application types discussed here allowed for different displays of the same event. Spreadsheets were useful for showing quantifiable data about my day, like hours spent. The word processor let me write a narrative about my day with added formatting for calling out important parts. The presentation app let me create slides showing a summary of my day with a few graphics added for emphasis. A database would let me store daily information and build up to a year in my life, or longer. Understanding the pros on cons of each of these applications will allow for the choice of the right one for the purpose when starting out on a project.
