Role of MS Office in Reforming Education

Technology and digital literacy has revolutionized the field of education. Classrooms have transcended the boundaries of the four walls. Teachers no longer use just a chalk and blackboard. Students no longer lug around the weight of multiple books in their backpacks. Assignments are no longer submitted in stacks of paper. The digital world has changed how humans interact and more importantly, it has transformed how we learn. MS Office, the leading and primary set of software belonging to the software giant Microsoft, has been playing a vital role in education. Each component of MS Office contributes in more ways than one. Microsoft, in order to transform educational technology in academic institutes, decided to provide certain selected components of Office 365 for free to schools. Microsoft office has important education applications which benefit teachers and students in various ways. Applications of MS Office like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint contain features which are incredibly helpful to teachers, students, and tutors.

Let us explore the various facets of MS Office and the role it plays in education:

1. MS Word

Microsoft Word is a word processing software that acts as a teaching tool for educators. It is an effective way for tutors and to demonstrate easy templates for writing applications and letters. With pen and paper becoming outdated, the future of applications, notes, and letters would be in the digital format. Even if they are needed in the physical form, they can simply be printed for convenience. Students can learn how to format their documents using MS Word. They will also begin adapting to grammar and spellings much better if it is instantaneously pointed out to them. Most assignments and homework are submitted in Word document formats. It is easy for the students to present error-free homework and convenient for the teachers too when it comes to keeping a track of the word count, etc. The biggest advantage that MS Word enjoys over any other word processor is the seamless integration of all Microsoft software present in the MS Office Suite.

2. MS PowerPoint

Way before MS Office entered the educational scene, teachers would give presentations using Overhead Projectors (OHP). It was not only inconvenient due to the low visibility and focus issues, but making OHP sheets (slides) was hectic even for the teachers! With MS PowerPoint, all the disadvantages of Overhead Projectors get eliminated. PowerPoint presentations are easier to design and after gaining the basic knowledge, users can even make their presentations more interesting and captivating! This is a boon since it will attract the attention of the young students. It contains some preset slides that one can use while creating the presentation. If you are not a big fan of the default properties, you may customize them entirely. What’s even more fun is that you can easily include videos, pictures, and audios in your presentations.

3. MS Excel

MS Excel is such a great innovation that math lovers swear by it! MS Excel is useful in converting raw data into interactive graphs, charts, and sheets. It is beneficial to teachers and students alike and it enjoys great popularity amongst everyone. Students can crunch in big numbers and process them easily using MS Excel. It has a diverse set of automatic functions and calculations and users can even design their own formulas. All the charts and graphs created in MS Excel can be easily imported into MS Word. Excel enjoys great popularity amongst those studying or teaching subjects like statistics because it reduces complex computations.

4. MS Access

While not as popular as MS Excel, MS Access has been an indispensable tool in maintaining data. MS Access has been largely used to make timetables and schedule for teachers and classes, maintaining a profile of teachers and students, generating progress reports, tracking attendance, and creating lesson plans. MS Access has also been helpful in managing database of books present in libraries, no matter what their size may be.

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Created on Apr 10th 2018 00:54. Viewed 318 times.

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