For this linking assignment, I took some time to examine my classmate’s responses to the Golden Record. A number of the classmate’s sites that I visited determined criteria that they deemed important to help make their selections. My criteria focused on the use of languages in songs. You can read about it here. Others, such as Sage defined three overarching themes that all songs must have: Pertinence to the human experience, Wealth of information and Decipher-ability. You can read about that here. Srupa also created criteria and you can read about it here. I wonder if Sage and Srupa are also classroom teachers. It has been drilled into us the importance of well developed rubrics and in the absence of a rubric, it would have been really hard for me to fairly decide which songs to include on the Golden Record. 

On the other hand, there were also a number of classmates who went with personal preference. Georgia admits that she did not create a rubric, instead she decided to pick songs that were pleasing, comforting to her ears: “I chose songs with softer melodies and/or had a relaxing tone to it”. You can read her post here.  Similarly, Trista stated: “I was immediately more drawn to songs that were familiar to me”. You can read more of her post here. Although this is a valid method of choosing songs, is this the impression that we want to give ET’s? The opinion of one individual on earth of pleasing songs? Do these selections then lack diversity? 

It was an interesting experience reading the methods of selections for this activity. An interesting follow up to this activity for me would be examining if  those who chose criteria and rubrics are teachers and if those who did not use rubrics work outside of the education field.