My COP’s

The two COP’s that I have considered to explore are Basketball and Mechanical Engineering.

Basketball is a complex sport that I am continually learning about. A typical Basketball player usually wears shorts that come down to their knees and shoes that are good for running and provide ankle support. They also usually go to the gym frequently. I know that basketball is a competitive sport and many people who play Basketball also watch it on television. What interests me about basketball is trash talking that goes on while the game is being played. I would like to know more about how professional Basketball is played compared to how college Basketball is played.

Mechanical Engineering is my goal as well as my passion in life. Mechanical engineers don’t have a defined look but I know they are intelligent in math and science. I also know that teamwork and communication are important aspects of engineering. Innovation interests me and I would like to know more about the process in which innovation occurs.

1102.InquiryProjectIntroduction aaron

notes on discourse and COPs

free write on COP

how elements of discourse relate to communities of practice.

Elements of discourse include actions, values, believing/feeling, thinking, language, deeds, tools, technology, places, and dressing. The discourse and literacy reading states  “A Discourse with a capital “D” is composed o f distinctive ways o f speaking/ listening and often, too, writing/reading coupled with distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing, with other people and with various objects, tools, and technologies, so as to enact specific socially recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities.” (page 155) Discourse with a little “d” only refers to the language part of discourse. In class we talked about ideology in discourse. The class reading refers to ideology as “lifeworld discourse” on page 157. According to the text “Our lifeworld Discourse is the way that we use language, feel and think act and interact, and so forth, in order to be an “everyday” (nonspecialized) person.” Ideology is also in communities of practice. In class I noted that ideology is something that gets under skin when expectations are not met, and in communities of practice there must be expectations. For instance, a team of engineers may be working on a project and one of the team members miscalculates an important feature in the project. The person leading the project will be upset because one of the team members did not meet expectations. This is just one example of how ideology in discourse is related to communities of practice.