Windows Explorer is (to my understanding) is basically something that helps you with file management. Among other things, you can easily rename files, copy and past them and move them.
MS Word is a program in which you can create documents for assignments (or anything else that needs to be written up). By simply clicked your mouse, you can make the document look very professional by using headers and footers, titles and sub titles and many more things.
MS Excel helps you create spreadsheets and charts rather easily. While my knowledge of it is very limited, I understand that you enter data, to which you can find out the sum, average etc. Using that data, you can also create a range of charts including (and not limited to) pie charts, scatter charts and bar charts.
MS PowerPoint allows you to create presentations that you can present to people. The use of animation and sound is allowed, but it has been made clear that you should only really use them to support your notes rather than decorate them. You don’t want the focus to be taken away from the point of the presentation.
Internet Explorer is but one of the browsers available to access the World Wide Web. Hyperlinks included in the browser (home, back page, refresh etc) make it simple to navigate your way.
Outlook Express is also but one of the programs you can use to send and receive emails. An alternative would be Thunderbird (through www.mozilla.org).
Adobe Acrobat Reader allows you to view PDF documents from the internet and such. You can either view these documents online through Acrobat or download them to your PC and view them from there.
Other common PC programs include audio and video players and photo editing programs.
In this week’s workshop, students were to complete tasks in both MS Word and MS Excel.
In the MS Word exercise, students had to copy and paste a section of text into a new document. That document was then to be altered by changing the typeface, margin and alignment, line spacing, creating headings (and keeping those headings with the text) and creating headers and footers. To complete these tasks, instructions were given on Blackboard in the document reading_Mod01-2-5.pdf. To see a screenshot of this part of the exercise completed, view the screenshot below (click for full image):
Students were then to copy and paste a small group of references into the same document and alphabetize them. A list of titles was then to be copied and pasted into the document and made into a table of contents by creating dot leaders for them. An image was then to be inserted underneath the table of contents. Again, instructions on how to complete these tasks were listed in the document on Blackboard. To see a screenshot of this part of the exercise completed, view the screenshot below (click to see full image):
In the MS Excel exercise, students were to firstly complete a table according to the requirements in the document Excel Exercises.doc.pdf found on Blackboard. Students were to adjust column widths and row heights, the table border, alignment of the cells, and some of the cell’s colours. Along the top of the table, cells B1 – H1 were to be labeled with week days (Monday – Sunday). Cell I1 was to be labeled Total and J1 Average. Cells A1 – A11 were to be labeled Activity, Traveling, Lectures, Tutorials, Lib/Study, Eating, Social, Sleeping, Other, Exercise and Total. Students were then to fill in how much time per day they spent doing each activity. Once that was finished, they were to use a Formula that calculated the Sum for each activity in the column following the cell titled Total (cell A11) to make sure each day included the full 24 hours. The summing rule was then to be applied to the row following the cell titled Total (cell I1). Once students had completed that, there was to be a Formula that calculated the Average for each activity in the row following the cell titled Average. For a screenshot of this completed activity, view the screenshot below (click to see full image):
Using the information gathered in this table (the total for each activity), students were to create two charts to present the findings: a pie chart and a column chart. To see a screenshot of these two charts, view the screenshot below (click to see full image):
I should take this time to say that having never used MS Excel properly until this workshop, I found the site http://www.baycongroup.com/excel.htm (provided on Blackboard) very helpful.
The first reading on Blackboard was titled Using MS Word for APA Tasks. This document covered all the different things you can do to a document to make it look professional. This included the steps we took to alter the text in our MS Word workshop as well as other varied things (hyperlinks, grammar check etc.) you can use.
The second reading on Blackboard was titled Graphic File Formats. Upon reading this, students were educated on what file format was the best one to use for certain graphics. Also included was what certain file formats would do (e.g. .gif’s could be a still image or an animation).
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