Rethinking Summative Assessment with Minecraft
This teacher is engaging Lit Students through thoughtful play
Ben Spieldenner is an English teacher in Ohio who is utilizing the popular game Minecraft in order to combine his passions for Literature, Critical Thinking and Authentic Assessment. I first learned about his work when I saw this tweet:
There is so much great stuff happening here and I reached out to Ben for an interview so that he could offer a deeper dive of the project itself as well as what students produced. He was kind enough to give 20 minutes of his time (see the full interview at the bottom of this post).
Some highlights of what he shared:
“Don’t ask questions for which the answers can be googled”
This one resonates with me big time! If the answer can be googled, I think we need to seriously ask ourselves if the question is aligned with anything that actually matters as far as impacting students’ successful futures. The project that Ben shares in the video interview goes beyond providing a “right” answer to actually demonstrating learning through critical thinking and analysis.
“I don’t assign homework and I try to make everything project-based”
Something I’ve found to be a conceptual leap that often gets lost in the Homework Battles is that people who don’t assign homework don’t tend to be opposed to students extending learning beyond the school day. On the contrary, their students can be found doing hours of work each day not because it was assigned but rather because they were empowered to explore whatever territory their own inquiry took them to. Teachers like Ben don’t need to assign homework because what they do assign (or perhaps better yet, “design”) are open-ended learning opportunities that their students eagerly seize.
“When we let Students lead learning, they will come up with things that are amazing that we never would have thought of”
One shocker for me was that Ben decided not to provide his students with a rubric. He didn’t even work with them to co-create a rubric. Instead, he provided four criteria questions that needed to be addressed. While this was a bit of an abstraction for learners, it turned out to not be very disruptive and also allowed them to take the lead in their own learning.
You can watch our full interview:
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As always, your own thoughts, ideas and pushback response posts are appreciated and valued. What do YOU think about Minecraft and the role of Playful Learning in summative assessments?
In addition to following Noah Geisel here on Medium, you can find him at SenorG on Twitter.