ReadWriteWeb

Over the past half-year, we have written extensively about e-books and e-readers. We've discussed the merits of e-books over paper books. We've covered Kindle e-books outselling hardcover best-sellers and their strength over the holiday season. We've even included the growth of e-readers and e-books in one of our Top Trends of 2010 posts.

But, as ReadWriteWeb editor Richard MacManus discussed in "5 Ways that Paper Books are Better than E-Books," everything from price to packaging to, most importantly, the feel of physical books may keep them on the shelves for a long time to come. Now, in a study called "Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education," another round in the debate has been settled on the side of paper. 75% of student preferred old-fashioned, paper-and-board textbooks over electronic versions.

In a move to reduce some of the barriers to IP transfer between academic research and entrepreneurship, the University of Glasgow has launched a new website "Easy Access IP" that will make some its intellectual property available to the public for free of charge, without cumbersome licensing rules and restrictions.

Want to know what the future workforce thinks of technology, how it uses search engines, social networking, and online collaborative tools? The recently released ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology gives some excellent insights into trends in college students' technology ownership, perceptions, skills, and habits.

The 2010 report was recently released by EDUCAUSE, a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of technology in higher education. The report is based on a survey from the spring of 2010 of over 36,950 freshmen and seniors at 100 four-year institutions and students at 27 two-year institutions.

We are beginning to hear announcements fairly frequently about the states, school districts, and universities that are moving to the cloud for their email and productivity tools. As schools and universities adopt cloud technologies, what will become of the school computer lab?

Computer labs have been important locations on campus for students to work, study, and access computing resources. But almost all students now come to college owning their own personal computers. A recent CNN story said that 95% of college students interviewed this spring owned at least one computer (83% owned a laptop, 24% a desktop, 15% both). That's up from 23% of students who owned laptops in 2003.

YouTern, an online community to link interns with startups, has launched their pilot program in California, with plans to expand nationwide.

While there are many programs that assist students with finding internships with large, established companies, until the launch of YouTern, there was no similar service helping entrepreneurial-minded students find a position with a startup. And now in turn, startups will have a resource to identify and recruit talented students for internship positions, a move that may help build a "startup culture" so college graduates don't feel as compelled to only seek employment with major corporations.

While there aren't nearly enough, there are several incubator programs out there for startups in most of the major cities with thriving startup cultures. These programs provide early-stage companies with funding, mentoring, and workspace among other aid, but there are very few programs that help college students looking for internships in the startup space to get connected with the companies that need their help. One incubator program, StartupRoots, is looking to change this trend with a brand new program aimed at brining students and startups together, and they're starting in startup mecca: Silicon Valley.

One of the fastest growing uses of technology is for online education. Student enrollment in online university degree programs has increased in recent years, but more interesting is the increase in kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) students who are foregoing recess and pep rallies to study in virtual classrooms.

No ambitious young person wants to wait until graduation to start working on projects, developing ideas, and building teams. As a case in point, consider how many success stories from the dotcom and Web 2.0 eras have begun with brilliant twenty-somethings dropping out of college to pursue their passions.

Speaking directly to this concern (or phenomenon, depending on your perspective), two students at the New York University Stern School of Business and a former MySpace IT director have started FledgeWing, a new social network that aims to connect aspiring student entrepreneurs with one another as well as with mentors, investors, and industry professionals.

In the earliest days of the Internet, getting an .edu email address and signing in to Pine for the first time was a rite of passage for many college freshmen. Now, however, virtually every new college student got an email address before even graduating from primary school. Because of this, a number of schools are now considering phasing out email hosting for their students altogether. According to a recent report (PDF), 20% of American colleges already outsource their email systems to commercial providers, and more plan to do so in the future.

A computer science professor at an Australian University is doing something revolutionary with YouTube - he's offering students who can't attend his classes college credit for watching his videos. Richard Buckland, a senior lecturer at the University of NSW in Sydney, Australia, was frustrated that high school students with a passion for computing and capable of studying at the college level were not able to make the commute to the university fit into their school day. Buckland then decided to turn YouTube into a remote classroom where the students could attend lectures virtually and then complete coursework just as his other students do.