Imagine you are a Middle College student, and you have to take a PowerPoint class for intersession. The intersession class lasts for four weeks, and you have eight chapters to cover. In each assignment for each chapter, you have four PowerPoints to create and edit; you have one quiz to do; you have a three-paragraph discussion; and in total you have about 23 assignments plus a midterm. This obviously overwhelms you, frustrates you, and creates a sense of confusion and stress.

When intersession began at SAC, MCHS freshmen were assigned to their second college class of the year: PowerPoint. At first many students seemed to be crazed due to the work that was given to them, but many got used to the assignments over the few weeks that was given to them. PowerPoint was a required class for freshmen students because the skills learned in the program would be useful later on with making more advanced and informational presentations for future jobs or classes.

According to the website computerhope.com, PowerPoint is known as a presentation program or a slideshow editing tool created by the company Microsoft. This program is regularly used by businesses, teachers, students and professors to create charts, slideshows with important information and images for a certain presentation. It helps users organize information, communicate more effectively, and produce presentations to deliver important information to colleagues and interested parties. This program makes the job easier and more efficient, regardless of the task you’re completing. PowerPoint holds a lot of valuable tools regardless of what kind of presentations you need to make.

According to a post on the website, nobledesktop.com called “Why Learn PowerPoint?”, learning PowerPoint skills can be useful as they can be used for almost anyone who works in a professional or office setting. This will help you gain some advantage from learning how to use the program. Careers such as educators, administrators, HR reps, managers, project leaders, or any other host of other white-collar professionals, use PowerPoint so learning how to use the program would be a benefit. Powerpoints helps communicate more effectively, so if you are attempting to sell a product or idea, PowerPoint would help present your idea in a more efficient way. Not only would this help make a visual presentation, but it would also help highlight important information that can be used to persuade your target. Learning PowerPoint can help you achieve your goal. In a professional environment, organizations use PowerPoint to provide their workers with important information or details. PowerPoint is used to compile information like contact info, website links, company policies, etc., so it can be easily shared among co-workers and employees who need the information.

Freshman Miyah Parker reflects about the assignments that were given to her during intersession.

“They were not pretty hard, but they were just really time consuming. So it did take a while to do them. I think it took like an hour per chapter or something like that,” Parker said.

Freshman Gustavo Martinez discovered that the PowerPoint class actually was valuable.

“I went into that class knowing almost nothing and came out learning a lot from PowerPoint,” Martinez said.

Parker talks about the usefulness of PowerPoint.

“I actually do think it is (useful), especially if you’re doing something in business. I feel like it’d be very useful because you do need to make presentations or whatever to make to your suppliers,” Parker said.

Freshman Yaiza Gomez shares her thoughts about the program.

“I think it’s a class that teaches you basic fundamentals like as a replacement for slides. It’s a much more advanced class,” Gomez said.

Reflecting on the usefulness of the PowerPoint class, Gomez said, “I could have learned that all on my own if I wanted to go on YouTube.”