The timescape of school tasks: towards algorhythmic patterns of on-screen tasks

ABSTRACT Screens are becoming omnipresent surfaces inside classrooms, namely through the implementation of personal screens at schools. This implementation reconfigures spatiotemporal organization of lesson activities by introducing specific screen mediated tasks that are majorly conducted individually on screens. By adopting the notion of timescape as an analytical lens to investigate the temporal landscape of screen mediated tasks, we turn our attention to students’ screen as the site in which different activities take place. By conducting an online guided tour with students in different subject matters, combined with an ethnographic observation, we firstly investigate how specific type of activities take shape on the screen during the task time and produce an internal temporality of screen. Secondly, through the analysis of the chronological time, we describe different temporal zones of synchronicity, focalization and dispersal. Finally, we argue that rhythms of screen mediated tasks are better captured through the term ‘algorhythm’ and conclude how algorhythmic patterns of task time enhance the prioritization of task completion instead of task duration which is a significant characteristic of the produced taskified time.