MOOCs as contemporary forms of books: new educational services between control and conversation

This text is devoted to an analysis of the Moocs, taking the viewpoint of the participants in these distance courses. Drawing on the emergence of new practices of training consumption, it tries to make the link between different perspectives of research: those coming from distance education, those relating to the analysis of educational resources, from textbooks. Taking into account the evolutions of books, especially with digital and Internet, it shows that considering Moocs as contemporary forms of educational (or cultural) books leads to change certain research issues and, more simply, the analyses devoted to them. Finally, it discusses two central processes in education, conversation and control, and shows how their articulation is reflected in the Moocs and how they are designed and used.Este texto volta-se a uma análise dos Moocs, considerando o ponto de vista dos parti- cipantes em cursos a distância. Com base no surgimento de novas práticas de forma- ção, busca-se estabelecer o vínculo entre diferentes perspectivas de pesquisa: as que procedem da educação a distância e as relacionadas à análise de recursos educacio- nais, a partir de livros didáticos. Tendo em conta a evolução dos livros, especialmente com o suporte digital e a internet, mostra-se que considerar Moocs como formas con- temporâneas de livros educacionais (ou culturais) leva a mudar certos problemas de pesquisa, bem como as análises a eles relacionadas. Finalmente, discutem-se dois processos centrais na educação, a conversa e o controle, mostrando como sua articu- lação se reflete nos Moocs, na forma como eles são projetados e usados

Textbooks and educational resources: overview of contemporary research

The text presents an overview of textbooks and educational resources, from inert text to reactive text to augmented reality, taking up the notion of pedagogical text. Then, it presents what can be learned from the cycle described by Larry Cuban of educational technologies in school systems (1986), which is still relevant today. The last part proposes current and future research paths related to the notion of educational resource, taking into account digital technologies and platforms

Rank-finiteness for modular categories

We prove a rank-finiteness conjecture for modular categories: up to equivalence, there are only finitely many modular categories of any fixed rank. Our technical advance is a generalization of the Cauchy theorem in group theory to the context of spherical fusion categories. For a modular category $\mathcal{C}$ with $N=ord(T)$, the order of the modular $T$-matrix, the Cauchy theorem says that the set of primes dividing the global quantum dimension $D^2$ in the Dedekind domain $\mathbb{Z}[e^{\frac{2\pi i}{N}}]$ is identical to that of $N$.Comment: 25 pages (last version). Version 2: removed weakly integral rank 6 and integral rank 7 section, improved rank 5 classification up to monoidal equivalence. Version 3: removed rank 5 classification (note title change)--this will be published separately. Significantly improved expositio

Éducation aux TIC, cultures informatiques et du numérique : quelques repères historiques

National audienceEducation in information and communication technology (ICT) should take into account common culture shared (or thought to be shared) by the pupils. Defining such education today also requires the informatics "object" to be more fully understood: within a historical perspective, by the cultures that are associated with it, and in the manner of conceiving the object. Indeed, developments in computer science might suggest that we have, within the space of 30 years, moved from computer fluency to digital culture. The former could be said to be focused on code and knowledge of programming languages while the latter could be said to be centered on usage, thanks to increasingly user-friendly and transparent interfaces. These two types of culture currently exist side by side without allowing us to think that there has been any movement of the one towards the other. Discussion of these cultures refers in fact to a conception of computer science that we put into perspective in order to be able to reflect on the question of "education for" with regard to ICT. In this article we will then set out three views of information technology which seem to us to be particularly meaningful in clarifying the debate: an intellectual approach, interaction with the objects, and a social informatics, based on cooperation among actors or agents (humans or non humans) and collective intelligence.L'éducation aux technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) devrait tenir compte des cultures communes et partagées, ou supposées telles, par les élèves. La définir aujourd'hui demande aussi de mieux cerner l' " objet " informatique, dans une perspective historique, par les cultures qui lui sont associées, et dans la manière de penser cet objet. En effet, les évolutions qu'a connues l'informatique pourraient laisser penser que nous sommes passés, en une trentaine d'années, des cultures informatiques aux cultures numériques. Les premières seraient focalisées sur le code et la connaissance des langages de programmation. Les secondes seraient centrées sur les usages, grâce à des interfaces toujours plus conviviales et transparentes. Or ces deux types de cultures coexistent aujourd'hui sans que l'on puisse considérer qu'il y ait eu évolution de l'une vers l'autre. Les discours sur ces cultures renvoient en fait à une conception de l'informatique qu'il convient de mettre en perspective pour pouvoir réfléchir sur la thématique de l' " éducation à " concernant les TIC. Nous exposons dans cet article trois visions de l'informatique qui nous semblent particulièrement significatives pour éclairer ce débat : une démarche intellectuelle, des interactions avec les objets et une informatique sociale, basée sur la coopération entre acteurs et agents et l'intelligence collective

On classification of modular categories by rank

The feasibility of a classification-by-rank program for modular categories follows from the Rank-Finiteness Theorem. We develop arithmetic, representation theoretic and algebraic methods for classifying modular categories by rank. As an application, we determine all possible fusion rules for all rank=$5$ modular categories and describe the corresponding monoidal equivalence classes.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1310.705