Microsoft Word, Excel,
and PowerPoint all provide similar, yet very different services. Microsoft Word
is a word processor, allowing you to type out your words and format your text (Vahid et al. ch. 5.1). Although
it has many graphical options to make cool designs, for things like flyers or
brochures, it is limited in its capacity and can be a pain to use when trying
to create more intricate designs and adding images. Word is perfect for writing
and formatting your text and was a great starting point for this assignment as
it allowed you to gather and write out your thoughts and initial list
simplistically. For this assignment, I felt that Microsoft word was the best
application to document my day as I was able to easily type out my thoughts and
adjust numbers and words without worrying about messing up formatting or
formulas. When creating my excel and PowerPoint, I had my word document up the
entire time to use.
Microsoft Excel, like word, allows you to type and add
words into the spreadsheet but is not useful for presenting text. Instead,
Excel is great for formulas and creating data tables that enable you to create graphical
data views, like pie charts, that adjust when data is added to the tables and
calculations (Vahid et
al. ch. 5.2). If my goal for this assignment was to calculate the
amount of hours I spent on activities a day and represent it in a graph to see
where the most time is spent, excel would have been the best application.
Finally, Microsoft PowerPoint guides you in creating a
presentation based off your writing and data views and gives you an easy-to-use
presentation mode with notes. While all three applications overlap in some
ways, they each shine in their own and are great when used in tandem. If my
goal in this assignment was to present to a group how I spend my day, this
application would be the best option. With a presentation I could interactively
show the group, and keep them engaged instead of showing a wall of text or
cells with numbers.
References
Vahid, F., Lysecky, S.,
Wheatland, N. (2019). TEC 101: Fundamentals of Information Technology &
Literacy. Zyante Inc.