• What kinds of models or activity ideas from Van Lehn do you think would be important to incorporate when having students model Zika?
• Models we've already incorporated involve the agent-based system that NetLogo utilizes in their programming. NetLogo is a computer application that functions through fluency in its coding "language," which is a system that has a greater learning curve than other model exploration methods but a high payoff in comprehension. Scaffolding in the form of the NetLogo tutorials (which tell you what variables to use) could benefit students learning the program initially. Plotting a graph alongside the animation helps solidify the relationship between what's happening visually and what's happening within the data.
• Qualitative construction uses the feedback system in a way that can help the student manipulate relevant materials and see how the system is affected by those changes. For a virus like Zika, the variables for which operate on a continuum, this can be especially helpful for interpreting factors.

Stage model/temporal decomposition, as in ecological successions

critical event functional analysis 

aggregate behavior process analysis

• Which practices from NGSS figure prominently and less prominently in Hestenes?
• Practices 1, 2, 3 and 6 are the main tenets of Hestenes' paper. Since he calls explicitly for students to reject their preconceived (and often misconceived) notions of Newtonian mechanics in favour of recreating the world and its foundation in order to understand physics, his entire premise lies upon modeling, or practice 2. Specifically, he refers to modeling as "the explanation [of processes]" itself. He calls for students to define the Newtonian world, a direct application of practice 1. In playing the games, experimental or not, students construct and carry out investigations of the problems (practice 3), leading to the synthesis of explanations and solutions (practice 6). 
• Practices 4 (analyzing and interpreting data), 5 (using mathematics and computational thinking) 7 (engaging in argument from evidence) and 8 (obtaining, evaluating and communicating information) certainly go hand in hand with Hestenes' Newtonian world but are not the focal pieces of the paper, as they aren't as concerned about the conceptual tools of modeling that Hestenes promotes.