2/2 Laura: Adding Computation to the Toolkit

         The practices presented in the NGSS standards are intended to represent the cycle of authentic practice in contemporary science laboratories.  In Nercessian’s article, we see each of the NGSS practices at work in the neural engineering lab studied, which confirms these practices as authentic and also as valuable to discovery.  While each of the steps is included in Nercessian’s depiction of the lab, she focuses on modeling, interpreting data, computational thinking, and communication most prominently.  Each of these practices supports her thesis that discovery is a dynamic process, as the lab went through multiple revisions of their model, changed their interpretation of burst patterns, and utilized computational thinking to better more effectively abstract and see the significant inputs to the system, all while communicating and arguing for different hypotheses, ultimately producing a discovery that was the product of many brains working and communicating together. 

            diSessa argues that computational literacy can provide the literate with a toolset that can facilitate more advanced results.  In Nercessian’s sample lab, D11 exemplified diSessa’s computational literacy by creating a computer model to more effectively abstract and understand what was going on in the physical model.  Before the computational model, the lab understood the bursts as noise, but when the bursts also occurred on the computational model, it was clear that they were not random and instead were the result of some combination of conditions inherent to the system.  Because computational modeling allowed for the more precise isolation of stimulants, D11 and company were able to make greater strides with their physical model and ultimately make a discovery about learning that may not have been possible without the computational model.  I think it is also important to note that computational thinking does not act in isolation, but rather supports the process of modeling and is just one of many tools scientists can, and should, use to get the best understanding of what is happening in the actual system.