The main advantage of using a computer is to be productive, meaning, to do things better or faster so that we can have more time to do things we like! Being productive is important at school or in the workplace. Some work associated with school can be tedious, like writing a very long essay. In here, we will look into the most common productivity applications intended for business and learning. All these applications all fall under off-the-shelf software. The big three are: word processors, spreadsheet software and presentation software.
Recall Hardware and Software
We have gained a great appreciation of the variety of digital devices that exist from Chapter 4, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. The same goes for software! Hardware and software go together like milk and cookies but do you remember the distinct difference from Chapter 3? The card below should refresh your memory.
System Software vs. Application Software
Just like hardware can fall into three main categories (input, output or both), software often falls into one of the following two main categories; system software which is a computer program that is designed directly control the computer hardware and application software which is a program that is designed for an end-user to fulfil a particular task.
Popular real world examples of system software include Windows OS, Mac OS, and UNIX; all of which are operating systems which is a topic covered in detail across three chapters.
You probably already guessed that the main focus in this post is application software for example, word processors, spreadsheet software, games, streaming software and the list can go on for a very long time...
Off-the-shelf vs. Bespoke Software
When digital product teams go through the process of designing software there are mainly two ways to go about it:
they either want to create one software product to sell to as many users as possible who will use it as-is, which is formally referred to as being off-the-shelf software.
or perhaps, go through the design process with the clients and users to carefully create a custom product in the way they want which is formally referred to as being tailor-made/bespoke software.
The design process for building and creating tailor-made/bespoke software is covered in Chapter 42. Therefore, it is important to point out that all the applications listed here are in actual fact tagged as off-the-shelf software.
Off-the-shelf | Tailor-made/Bespoke |
Tends to provide a wide variety of features so that it can be "all features for all users" who need to fulfil the same task but in different ways. | Limited features and consistent UI so that even users who are less tech savvy are comfortable using it quickly. |
Tend to be bloated and take up a lot of storage space on your computer. | Tend to be light in terms of their infrastructure and take up much less space. |
Complex to learn and use. Also much more complex to design and build. | Very focused interface and the learning curve to use it is much lower for a user. Very easy to build as the style of development is very repetitive. |
Cheaper to buy and easier to maintain. | Overall they end up paying much more for a product. |
Users get regular updates without extra payment. | Improvements or updates depend on the contract but can come at an extra cost. |
It is important to be aware of the general situations in which an off-the-shelf product could potentially be used as such scenarios often come up in exam questions.
Word Processors
A word processor is a computer program that allows a person to create beautifully typed documents. You are probably familiar with Microsoft Word, and indeed it is a great processor but it is not the only one.
Any program that allows you to type formatted text can be labelled as a word processor. Microsoft Word is a word processor that also has sophisticated desktop publishing features for writing books and magazines.
Other word processors that deserve a bit of the spotlight :
LibreOffice Writer
Google Docs
Dropbox Paper
What does a user expect from a basic WP?
Microsoft Word is so bloated with features that it is quite challenging to make out with is really necessary. We tried to narrow it down to a digestible list of 10:
Choice of Font, Size and Colour.
Simple text formatting like Bold, Underline and Italic.
Text alignment and indentations.
Word wrapping meaning the automatic continuation to the next line as you type.
Numbered or Bulleted lists.
Page layout and Margins.
Insert Tables and Pictures.
Text selection using the mouse.
Find and Replace.
Inserting images through a file browser or Copy + Paste.
How many of the above can you spot in the images below?
Who needs to use a Word Processor?
The real question is... who does not? Writing and communicating is so important in our lives. We write at school, we write for a living, we write letters. The list is endless. Do you ever use a Word Processor?
Advantages | Disadvantages |
Time saving ⏲️ | Can cost a lot of money 🤑 |
Crisp fonts that are easy to read 📘 | Can be a bit difficult to use 😰 |
Spell Check ✔️ | |
Can be paperless 🌳 | |
Word processing for power users
A power user is a user of a computer system or program whose skills and expertise are more advanced than most other users. As we pointed out earlier, Microsoft Word is enriched with desktop publishing features intended for people who are skilled in administration and office organisation or publishing.
Automatic Table of Contents
The table of contents forms automatically from the headings and subheadings in the document. If a heading’s page changes due to addition or deletion of text (or any other reason e.g. changing the size of characters) the page indication in the Table of Contents will change automatically. Word processing applications present us with many types of tables to choose from. One such format is shown on the right.
Index Creation
The index is an important presence in a book and word processing applications can create it automatically. An example of an index is shown in the following picture.
Multi-column Documents
Documents like newspapers or brochures are divided in multiple columns and this can be easily set up in a word processor. The whole document or a part of it can be divided in as many columns as you wish. The figure on the left shows part of a document divided into two columns.
Tables
Tables can easily be created in text documents. There is also a variety of templates to choose from. Rows can be also automatically sorted in alphabetical order. Included is a comprehensive tutorial about using tables in Microsoft Word. Many similar tutorials are available for alternative applications.
Mail-merge
Mail-merge is a term used to indicate the combination of a document with a file that contains tabular data. For example a document which is in fact a letter that must be sent to a number of people. Rather than duplicating the letter document and manually changing the name we can create a file that holds the name and surname of each person. One can insert data placeholders in the document so that upon merging the placeholders are replaced with the data. As a result each letter will be addressed to a person as shown in the video below.
Let's Create A Brochure 🙌
We can probably knock out a lovely brochure in just 10 minutes using an existing Template by clicking on File > New From Template... and you should be prompted to select your starting point from a number of options. When you select one of the options there will be placeholders laid out for you for your original text and your own images. You can even go a step further by changing colours, adding tables, configure an overall style and so much more. Relax, let your creative juices flow and make it yours!
When should I use DTP features?
When I intend to release newspapers ⚖️ on a regular basis.
When I would like to publish a magazine about a passion ⚽️🍔🎹🎨of mine.
When my school wants to do a newsletter.
When I want to create a flyer to educate people about climate change on Earth Day💚!
Spreadsheet Software
In order to keep this post brief, this has been explained in detail in Chapter 9. However, perhaps it is useful just to give you a little summary here...
Who needs to use spreadsheet software?
Spreadsheet software is typically useful for analysing numerical data or keep data organised. Teachers use this software to keep track of their students' grades or their lesson plans. Students sometimes use it to keep track of what topics they studied 🙄. Professionals in the financial sector use it to draw up reports.
Presentation Software
Presentation software is a multimedia, more on this in Chapter 24, application software that is specifically designed to allow users to create a presentation of ideas by stringing together text, images, animation, audio and video. The presentation tells a story or supports a speech or presents information in small chunks. Microsoft PowerPoint is a very rich and popular tool to create presentations but I personally really like to use a web platform called Canva. I use it all the time to create very colourful and engaging quizzes for students. Do you remember this one?
Who needs to use presentation software?
Anyone that needs to communicate something to an audience will probably use presentation software. Teachers use it to introduce topics to their students and have visuals during lessons. Software developers use it to give a progress report of an application, or perhaps use it to do a quick demo for customers. HR use them to give training at work... again, the list is endless here.
When should I use presentation software?
When I do a lot of research and I need to summarise it to my teacher and friends.
When I would like to introduce my friends to a topic I am passionate about ⚽️🍔🎹🎨.
When I have a great idea for a game or business and I want to pitch it.
When I have great ideas for improvements at school and I want to share them with the HM and his team.
Being productive on the web
We have only talked about the most basic productivity applications but as I am sure you are aware there is so much more on the web. You can take your pick and not need to store the all that software locally to take precious space on your secondary storage. With an internet connection and a small web-browser like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox you can be as productive as you like...
Hot Exam Topic 🔥
Even though these topics are a little outdated and are being phased out, questions about the general use of common applications occur frequently in exams. I would not really focus on studying the features, but rather know how to correctly pick the right tool for the job! You should be able to answer such questions from your experience at school.
Q. Which is the best software to use for each of the following tasks?
To create/edit documents containing formatted text. | Word Processor |
To present a topic to students at school. | Presentation Software |
To keep track of money spending and plan a budget. | Spreadsheet |
Q. In Malta, students have free access to Microsoft 365 package. Name two apps/services suitable for students that this package offers. A. PowerPoint and Word.
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