Written by: Leanne McRae
Abstract: Ubiquitous computing describes the current conditions of our interactive, screenbased habitats where movement between screens has become a defining trope of everyday life. As students and teachers increasingly deploy screen-literacies within the education process where laptops, tablets and mobile phones become the mechanisms by which education is accessed and activated, new ways of thinking about and through attention, learning, and scholarship need to be deployed. The possibilities of a decelerated curriculum offers opportunities to re-encode the structures and styles of learning students engage with to enable them time to absorb, ponder and problematize the processes of their learning. By asking students to slow their interaction with texts, interfaces, digital and analogue environments teachers are able to engage with digital technologies and ubiquitous screens in meaningful and challenging ways via course content and assessment strategies that enable new technologies a critical and relevant space within their teaching and learning landscape. In this paper, the example of a staged assessment structure is used to demonstrate the ways in which multiliteracies can be activated via deceleration but in ways that permit screen-based interactions while creating a space for critical reflection on the networks of attention that flow across screens.
Keywords: Ubiquitous computing, pervasive learning, digital technology, pedagogy, teaching and learning