Persuasion in Ancient Greece

Andrew Scholtz, Instructor

Informational Pages. . .

Brief Essay-PowerPoint on Plato's Gorgias

Useful Links

• PowerPoint: Effective Use Of
• Guide to Academic Honesty, Research, etc.
• Selected Issues in Writing: Thought, Style, Grammar, etc.

Submission Instructions (deadline of midnight, 19-Sep)

1. Create your PowerPoint as described below.
2. Save resulting PowerPoint (ppt/pptx) file to your documents.
3. ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION ONLY (no hard copy):
   1. Open myCourses course site.
   2. Click "Assignment Submission" link.
   3. Click the "View/Complete" link under "Plato Gorgias PowerPoint Essay." Follow upload instructions.

Purpose

The purpose is to help us get acquainted, and to help familiarize you with my criteria for writing and for "PowerPointing."

1. The very short essay, on Plato's Gorgias, will introduce your writing to me, and you to my writing expectations to you.
2. The very short PowerPoint you'll assemble will also help with getting a sense of what works best with the medium as a mode of visual display and of idea organization.
3. Though no outside research, this offers you a more user-friendly way to try your hand at critical-reflective writing.

The PowerPoint

• What follows concerns specifically the Essay-PowerPoint due 19-Sep on Plato's Gorgias. For tips on PowerPoint generally, see PowerPoint Help, also my Sample PowerPoint.

This will be a three-slide (no more!) PowerPoint: title slide, body slide, "Works Cited" slide. Your paper text (300-words, +/–) will be typed into the "notes" area of the file.

Details:

Display Slides (what the audience sees)

1. TITLE SLIDE (PowerPoint slide layout "Title Slide") with your PowerPoint's name (like the title of a paper), your name, the class, the date. Simple, but essential.
2. BODY SLIDE ("Title and Content" layout). In the actual slide area (the part that's projected), a
   • Title heading (in the heading area) suitable to the contents of the slide.
   • Set of two or three brief phrases, perhaps only single words, that somehow highlight and outline the main "talking points" of your essay.
     • Nouns, not verbs.
     • Short phrases, not sentences — more here.
3. WORKS CITED SLIDE (also "Title and Content" layout), with just ONE entry: the edition of Plato's Gorgias you're using. That biblio entry needs to conform to MLA style. The heading for this last slide will be "Works Cited."

Notes Area (what only you see when you print out the file in "notes" format)

In the notes area of your body slide, please insert a 300-word (+/–) reflective essay in response to Plato's Gorgias.

FORMAT, CITIATION. Use an easily read font like Calibri or Arial or times 12-point (should fit fine!). Line spacing for these notes is irrelevant. (This isn't quite a fully fledged MLA paper.) When you cite and/or quote from the dialogue, use only those navigation numbers provided in the text, for instance,

Socrates curiously compares his interloctor to a plover (449b).

Note that I did not cite author or work. That's because I'm working from only one source: the dialogue itself. So please, no research beyond reading the Gorgias, but do cite the dialogue to support your points!

Please, no title at the top of your essay; it's on the title slide.

TOPIC etc. Pick some detail, possibly a larger point, in the text and reflect on it critically, just as you have been in your journal entries, only this time in a more developed way. This is not yet high-stakes writiing. Rather, it's a way to feel your way toward a more substantial product.

• You are invited, even encouraged, to make one or both of your Gorgias journal entries the basis of the short essay you'll be writing.

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