Exercises: Documents, spreadsheets and presentations

Match each task with the most appropriate office software tool (word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation software) and justify your choice: (a) drafting a formal letter to the local municipality, (b) keeping track of the expenses for a school trip, (c) presenting a science project to the class, and (d) creating a poster with photos and short texts for the hallway.

In a word processor, you can make a heading large by changing the font manually or by applying a heading style. Explain the difference between these two methods and the advantages of using styles in a long document.

The figure shows a spreadsheet with the budget for an end-of-year party, but the total for one of the rows has not been calculated.

State which calculation needs to be performed to obtain the missing total and calculate its value. Also calculate the total cost of the party by adding the totals of all three rows.

The window of a word processor has several areas: the ribbon with buttons, the rulers, the typing area, and the bottom status bar. Explain what each of these four areas shows or allows you to do.

A long document requires a cover page and a table of contents. Explain what the document must satisfy so that the table of contents can be generated automatically, and what needs to be done to update it as the work grows and page numbers change.

The teacher asks for the assignment to be submitted with margins of $2.5\ \text{cm}$, line spacing of $1.5$, and justified text. Explain what each of these three settings is and where they are changed in the word processor.

When pasting a photo in the middle of a document, all the text moves and becomes jumbled up. Explain what text wrapping options are (in line with text, square/wrapping around text) and which one you would choose to illustrate a specific paragraph without ruining the layout.

The spellchecker underlines words in red, but it does not catch everything. Explain what types of errors it finds and give two examples of errors it does NOT catch (think of words that exist but are used incorrectly, such as "there" instead of "their").

A classmate's presentation has slides with whole paragraphs copied from the written report, and he reads them out loud during the presentation. Explain the problem with this way of presenting and rewrite the content of this slide applying the rules of a good presentation: "Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, algae, and some bacteria convert solar light energy into chemical energy, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil to produce their own food and releasing oxygen as a waste product, a process essential for life on Earth."

In a spreadsheet, cell D2 contains the formula "=B2*C2", where column B stores the unit price and column C stores the number of units purchased. Explain what this formula calculates, what happens to it if it is copied from cell D2 to cell D3, and what formula you would write to sum all the totals in column D.

You have the class grades in a spreadsheet and want to add charts. State which type of chart you would choose in each case and why: (a) the progress of your math grades throughout the year, (b) the breakdown of your free time between sports, reading, and screen time, and (c) a comparison of the average grade for each subject.

The figure shows a spreadsheet with purchases of classroom supplies: column D stores the formula for each row and column E shows the result calculated by the program, but one of the rows does not add up correctly.

Find the row whose result does not make sense, explain what error its formula has and why it happened (think about what happens to cell references when copying a formula), and calculate the correct result.

Presentation software has "speaker notes" that are only visible to the presenter. Explain what they are used for, what you would write in them for a presentation of a project (and what you would not write), and how they help you avoid reading from the slides.

In a word processor, you can align data using tab stops or a table. Explain the difference, why a table is tidier and more robust, and describe how you would insert a three-column table for a class timetable.

When submitting assignments, PDF format is often requested. Explain what a PDF preserves exactly as you designed it, what cannot easily be done with it, and two reasons why teachers prefer it over an editable document.

Explain what a document template is, the advantage of using the school's official template for assignments, and what elements you would define when creating your own template (fonts, styles, title page, margins).

In a group project, one student drafts the text using a word processor, another prepares calculations in a spreadsheet, and another designs the final presentation layout. Design the workflow to combine the three parts without losing information or formatting: what is exported from each tool, in what order, and what problems might arise when bringing everything together.

For a Technology project, your team needs to write a report sharing files across computers with different programs and operating systems (some use LibreOffice, others Microsoft Office, and others cloud-based applications). When exchanging files in .docx and .odt formats, tables get displaced, the font changes, and some formulas become unreadable. Analyze the technical cause of this issue, distinguishing between proprietary formats and open standards. Then, design a saving and submission protocol for the group, justifying which format you should use during collaborative editing and which one for the final non-editable submission to the teacher.

Compare these two presentations on the same topic: one with 40 text-heavy slides and all animations enabled, and another with 10 plain slides containing one idea per slide. Assess which one will communicate the message better, justify your answer with specific criteria, and propose your own rule regarding the number of slides.

The school administrative office wants to automate the sending of 120 personalized letters to summon families to a parent-teacher meeting. An administrative assistant created a spreadsheet with all the data jumbled into a single column: "Student Name, Grade, Date, and Time". Explain why this table will prevent performing the mail merge, design the correct structure that the table should have (indicating necessary columns and two example rows), and draft the main excerpt of the template letter in the word processor, showing exactly how and where the merge fields should be inserted.

Look at a spreadsheet with columns A (First Name), B (Last Name), C (Group), and D (Final Grade). To sort the class from highest to lowest grade, someone selected only column D and clicked "Sort Z to A", ignoring the program's warning to "expand the selection". Interpret what happened to the data integrity and what consequences this has for the students' grades. Then, design the correct procedure to isolate and view exclusively the students in "2nd B" sorted alphabetically by their last names without disconnecting any data.

Design the complete budget for an end-of-year school trip for 28 students in a spreadsheet: the expense items (coach, tickets, food), the formulas for the total per item and the overall total, the calculation of the price per person, and the chart you would use to present the breakdown of costs. Explain each decision.

A slide has light gray text on a white background, small font, and a decorative photo covering part of the title. Evaluate its accessibility with someone in mind who has poor vision or is sitting at the back of the classroom, and propose three specific design improvements, explaining what problem each one solves.

The school is undecided between installing a paid office suite on each computer, using a free open-source installed suite, or working with a cloud-based suite. Compare the three options (cost, updates, group work, internet dependency) and recommend one for the technology room, justifying your choice.