I found this symposium to be a bit all over the place, but not in a way that made any of it feel irrelevant or unimportant, but more so in a way that was just so overloading in terms of ideas and information that I’m not really sure where to start. I guess what stood out most was Adrian’s discussion of the school system in regards to learning (I know this seems to have little importance under the topic of hypertext, but it was still interesting). He discussed how high school does not prepare you to ask questions or to succeed at life after VCE, and ignores (mostly) the idea of hypertext, instead choosing to focus purely on getting the best results at the end of the year. I think this is a good point, but at the same time there is a system that is in place, and even if it could be better, a lot would have to happen in order to change this, especially since firstly you would have to change the way universities use atar scores to decide who gets into their courses which puts the pressure on schooling to ensure that students get the best results possible in their final exams. Basically, the problem doesn’t stop with school, it’s much bigger than that. In times of hypertext however, I definitely agree that there could be changes made to the system. Too many websites are blocked in school due to the possibility of inappropriate or irrelevant material.In my school, so much was blocked that they made categories that you could find all the blocked websites under, almost everything apart from google and scholarly articles being blocked from the system. I think that this could be a major restriction, and the idea of allowing various websites means there were be a greater flow of information. As Adrian said, a library would never ban a book before of the possibility that there might be something inappropriate on one of its pages.
