Open Office

Open Office



Main Features: Open Office is a free alternative to Microsoft Office Suite. It features a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a power point presentation program, and a graphics program. Open Office can open, edit, and save files in the format of Microsoft or to allow sharing and reading of documents made on other programs. As the name suggests, Open Office has an open software license, meaning it can be used by anyone for any purpose with no threat of action from the developer.

Level of Difficulty: All of the Open Office programs are easy to use. They are no more difficult than the comparable Microsoft Office programs. Writer, the word processor is the easiest to use with easy options to edit your text. Calc, the spreadsheet program, is easy to use to great charts and tables, but would require some more knowledge to perform math functions like Excel. Impress, is very similar to PowerPoint, you can make basic presentations with little prerequisite knowledge. Draw, the graphics program would require some basic visual arts ability.

Classroom Application: Open Office can be used in a classroom by teachers and students. Teachers can prepare presentations to go along with lectures using Impress. Students can use Writer to type their homework assignments. Calc and Draw can be used for other assignments that require more than typed work. Since it is compatible with any computer operating system (Widows, Mac, or Linux) it can be used by everyone in the class.

Conclusion: Open Office is a great tool and worth using. Buying licenses for Microsoft Office can be expensive for a school and students. Open Office provides a free alternative that is just as easy to use. It is the kind of tool that you will get out of it what you put into it. If you only want to type documents, you can; but if you want to do more than that, the program is capable of it and you just need to learn it.