Documenting a Day

           Regarding documenting my day, I found all applications useful for various reasons. Documenting my day in journal form with the word processor was very straight forward for me. For someone who enjoys writing, a journal entry describing my day allowed me to add some creativity to the assignment, such as feelings or emotions experienced. The word processing application also allowed me to display important parts of the day in a bulleted list, which is helpful for readers who want a more straightforward understanding of my day. An advantage to word processing applications for a user is the number of formatting options available. A user can choose various fonts and page styles. Another benefit to word processing applications are the review options available. A word processing application will automatically display spelling and grammar errors, which can easily be corrected.

            Although word processing applications can be handy, there are some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that a user may feel overwhelmed with the number of different options available for formatting. For someone who is not familiar with computers or word processing applications, one may struggle when using the application. Another disadvantage to a word processing application is the fact that a user is not easily able to organize information like they could with a spreadsheet. Word applications are also limited regarding calculations and formulas.

            Documenting a day with a spreadsheet was also very beneficial. I was able to input each critical aspect of my day into cells, then easily calculate percentages of time spent on each task via a simple formula. The spreadsheet was straightforward as far as the information displayed, and I found the spreadsheet to be the most useful for documenting my day. Some advantages to a spreadsheet application are the number of formula options available to a user as well as the chart options. For example, a statistician might find a spreadsheet more useful for displaying population data for an area. Within the spreadsheet, this user can calculate means and medians as well as input charts to display the data.

             Some disadvantage to a spreadsheet application is the learning curve that is required to operate as well as the limitations on text formatting. As with word processing application, spreadsheet applications require a user to be computer literacy to use. A user will also need some knowledge to understand how to calculate formulas. Furthermore, spreadsheets don’t allow users many text formatting options like a word processor does.

              Regarding the presentation application, I found this one to be the most time consuming when documenting my day. Presentation applications display data on slides. An employee might find this type of application the most useful to view information for a meeting or a teacher might use a presentation application for a lecture. An advantage to presentation applications is the number of design options available. Someone viewing a slide show about my day might enjoy this option the best as presentation applications may be more visually pleasing as the creator can add multiple pictures, animations or different page layouts to attract a specific audience. A disadvantage to presentation applications are the limitations in displaying large amounts of data. Although these applications allow a user to insert charts and spreadsheets, a user is limited with the amount of space on the slide itself. It would not be beneficial for a user to insert a table of data that would require a significant decrease in the size of the chart to fit on the page as individual viewing the slide may not be able to see the data.

            The fourth and final application used to document my day was a database application. I found this application the least exciting. Database applications are used to store data and allows multiple users to access. Some advantages to these applications are the amount of data that can be stored and the search options available. For example, a hospital may use database applications to store patient information. The hospital may have thousands upon thousands of records stored yet easily accessible by the staff via search queries. A cardiologist may need to access records from only heart patients and filter out all other patients and can do so effectively with a database application.

           A disadvantage to database applications, like some of the other applications, are the formatting options available. Although database applications are great for storing data, the look and design are very straightforward. Data is displayed in cells like a spreadsheet but there are limited options for formatting like word or presentation applications, and if someone is viewing a database, they might have a hard time understanding what they are viewing without an explanation. For example, if someone were to open my database file for documenting my day, the viewer may not understand what they are looking at as easily as the journal entry or presentation.