Slides

Vincenza Antonetta Berardo

Jul 28

2 min read

Updated: Aug 3

Slides in my classroom serve several purposes

Give the students something to look at and visually connect to the reading
Organize the structure of the day's lesson
Keep me on track and prevent the students from distracting me too much

I don't put a ton of information on the slides, but rather use them for engagement and visual aids to talk through the material. For instance, when discussing the Socratic ethical doctrine that no one knowingly aims for the bad, my slide has an imagine of a tree-lined road receding into the distance. I use this visual aid to talk the students through the Socratic idea that all "weakness of will" (atraxia) is actually "mis-measurement." Socrates makes the argument that current "goods" (relieving nicotine cravings, for instance) look big only because they're so immediate; and distant "ills" (lung cancer) look small because they're so far away in the future. Therefore, people who choose to do something bad (smoking) are not "aiming for the bad," or even having a lapse of willpower, but rather mis-measuring. The trees in the foreground of the picture look bigger than the trees in the background, although the trees in the background could actually be bigger.

Through a Socratic dialogue with the students (they usually provide more fun examples of "aiming for the bad" than smoking, that's just my tried-and-true example) and utilization of the visual aid on this slide, the students are able to understand what seems like a confusing ethical framework when they first read Plato's Apology.

For some readings, such as Descartes' Meditations, the visual nature of slides is helpful because I can use it to show students optical illusions of the sort that first initiate Descartes' methodological doubt. I also integrate video clips as another way of breaking up class time and retaining the attention of my students.

Below are some samples of my slideshows. I don't necessarily get to every slide in every lesson, or for every level class. Some of the slideshows that deal with ancient philosophy, for instance, I go into more detail with my upper-level students than my lower-level ones, and so for the latter I simply skip slides that I don't plan on addressing in that class.