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Teachers' and Students'

Resources Available on This Site

The following files were developed over the years to be of help to students in my classes. Students and teachers should feel free to use them as desired. China-related materials are listed on a separate page. (Link)

On-Line Utilities for Teachers

  1. Self-Grading Quizzes for Your Web Site
    Comment: By pasting minimally formatted questions and answers into an on-line window, an instructor receives an interactive quiz that can be saved for use on a class web site. The options include four different kinds of interactive quizzes and involve minumum fuss by the instructor. A key characteristic is that the quizzes do NOT report results except to the student, who is invited to fiddle the answers until eveything is correct, and to use any quiz over and over for review. Students turn out to like that a lot more than one might anticipate.
  2. Interactive Glossaries for Your Web Site
    Comment: These glossaries can be study aids roughly on a par with flashcards. The script here works fine, but I have decided I don't think it is very effective educationally.
  3. Color Tester to check codes for background and text colors on your web pages.

Useful Advice to College Students

  1. Candid Study Hints ("How to Prevent Homework From Screwing Up Real Life")
  2. Academic Integrity & Cheating
    This is a more detailed (and useful) discussion than a student is likely to find elsewhere. (It even includes the infamous "Disastrous Adventures of Jimmy Gimmie.") Although it focuses on UCSD, and is based in my experience as professor and administrator at UCSD, most of it is broadly applicable elsewhere.
  3. How To Avoid Sounding Like an Idiot: An Underground Guide to Literacy Even in Termpapers
    This is the famed and dreaded "gorilla paper." Since people will judge you by your writing, you might as well know what they are going to be annoyed by.
  4. How to Cite Sources As Painlessly As Possible: Bibliographic Format Specimens (& stuff your English teacher never told you)
    Comment: This is a very useful guide to doing citations and bibliographies in termpapers and articles in the simplest way possible. Examples include kinds of sources that writing teachers never tell people about.

Chinese Studies Resources (Separate Index Page)

Non-China Essays Written for Classroom Use

Not finding appropriately focused, priced, or available reading materials for some courses, I have sometimes written my own, usually for freshman survey courses. For longer items, the web version usually includes pictures. Here is a list of what is available.

In addition to the items listed below, I have sometimes also assigned some of my research articles, listed under Selected Writings Available On-Line. For many similar items related to China, click here.

  1. Ethnohistorical Sketches of Traditional Societies
    1. The Neolithic & the Metal Ages (Four Essays)
      (older version; equivalent to about 40 printed pages.)
    2. Egyptian Origins (Equivalent to about 30 printed pages.)
    3. The Aztecs: A Tributary Empire (Equivalent to about 50 printed pages.)
    4. Hopi Social Order (Equivalent to about 17 printed pages.)
    5. Most Ancient China (Equivalent to about 12 printed pages.) (Also listed on China page.)
  2. Brief Essays on Archaeology & Anthropology (Each equivalent to 2-4 pages.)
    1. Basic Stone Tools
    2. Paleo-Indian Spear Points
    3. Ancient Metallurgy
    4. Ancient Cloth
    5. Prehistoric Beringia
    6. The Bantu Expansion
    7. The Idea of Evolution
    8. Mitochondrial Eve
    9. Human Birth and Bipedalism
    10. Quick Essays on Social Theory and Other Abstractions
      (A number of recurring abstractions related to models, classification, theories, motivation, mystification, &c.)
      • Two Kinds of Definitions
      • Classification: Lumping & Splitting
      • Variables & Models
      • Explaining Human Behavior: The Question "Why?"
      • Symbols, Sumptuation, and Mystification
      • Conflicting Loyalties, & Cross Cutting Ties
    11. Background Note on Tea
    12. Note on Esperanto
    13. Notes on Nahuatl
  3. Jordan's Crochety Dictionary of Anthropology
    1. Annotated Glossary of Specialized Terms in Anthropology (About 230 terms)
    2. Annotated Glossary of Specialized Terms in Religious Studies (About 80 terms)
    3. Expansions, Definitions, and Rants (About 100 terms)
      This is my own access page for "More About" expansions, essentially mini-essays designed to amplify terms or topics briefly mentioned in classes. These tend to be longer and more detailed than the "annotated definitions" in the previous items.
  4. Quick-Reference Chronologies
    1. Chronological Table of Mesoamerican Archaeology
    2. Chronological Table of Southwestern Archaeology
    3. Chronology of Troy
  5. Aggressively Simple Maps & Charts
    1. Map of Mexican State Names for use in any course related to Mexico
    2. Map of Southwestern River Systems
    3. See also the index of China materials.
    4. Reference Table of Hominid Classification

Materials for Teaching Esperanto

  1. Diversaj Helpiloj por Instruistoj

Materials for Studying Classical Nahuatl (Aztec)

  1. Notes on the Classical Nahuatl (Aztec) Language
  2. On-line Nahuatl Textbook
  3. On-line Reference Grammar of Classical Nahuatl

References Materials From a Course on the Ethnography of Christianity

  1. Annotated Bibliography on Christianity
  2. Catholic Religious Vocabulary
  3. Amazingly Cool Christianity Quiz
  4. Miscellaneous Web Links on Christianity
  5. The Story of St. Nicholas (Latin and English)

Places to Go

  1. San Diego Area Museums of interest to me and possibly my students.

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Background design: Motif from traditional canoe painting of the Yami of Botel Tobago