Abstract:

Preliminary: Social Transformations and Technologies. The contemporary development of technology elucidates that the modern society is going through a time of change. In the second part of 20th century there is coming to fusion of modern society and technology. The technological turn generated a new model of society as a network (M. Castells). Above all the technologies of visualisation have changed perception of time and space in social life. Furthermore, with the new technologies is joined the question about the possibilities to form a new system of education that are able to attain new competences indispensable in the technologized and transcultural reality. In this manner technologies are no more only artefacts but became as a medium the real space of social life and finally a space of education.

Spaces, Mobilities and Competences: The spatial turn and the emergence of new learning culture. The last decades are dominated by two slogans mobility and globalization as expression of spatial turn. With the space is connected an other constitutiv element for social life – the time. Both space and time as social phenomena make out the theory of spacing which generated demand of new competences, i.e. flexibility and readiness to mobilities and changes in professional life. All these changes are expressed by the metaphors of multidimensional mobility (J. Urry) as the permanent fluctuation and configuration of society (N. Elias). The new design of space and time corresponds to the necessity of flexibility and innovation which are characteristic in an information society. That is also the background of all reforms and modifications in the educational systems as whole in the last decade. Therefore it is necessery to develope a new conception of learnig culture based on new technologies.

Transdisciplinar education: Exemplifications of models and competences. The communication technologies have created a new dynamic space of education founded by virtualisation and interactivity. In this sense technology as a medium becomes an in-between and a new paradigm in educational process. The new (E-)learning culture is influenced by the idea of open, developable system and learning as a self-determined, active process that has to be enriched with communicative and collaborative elements. ‘Regulation or freedom’ that is the principal dilemma concerning e-learning. As an alternative there appears a hybrid model which express the demands of education in the information age: 1) the necessity of lifelong, self-regulated and competence-orientated learning; 2) transforming ‘learning on the screen’ into hybrid model of education with e-learning and blended learning, with mixed virtual and real multidisciplinar moduls. This model serves the formation of key-competences (besides the ‘soft skills’) like multidisciplianrity and transculturality which should be applicable, durable, transferable and complementary to each other, also as the condition of innovation and responsability. Such open and transdisciplinar system of education is realized at the Department of Humanities the Wroclaw Technology University, where the two different cultures of science – humanities and engineering science – have to be put together in the sense of complementarity.