Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas

For my 3rd emerging technology post, I decided to check out http://www.pandora.com. Pandora Radio is pretty awesome. Pandora Radio allows users to create their own radio stations based off of musicial artists or songs. Pandora Radio was created to allow people to access the Music Genome project. The Music Genome project, in the simplest terms, is a mathematical categorization of songs that allows similar songs and to be grouped together.

To use Pandora Radio all one has to do is sign up using their e-mail address and create a profile. Next comes the fun part, create a radio station! The site prompts you to enter a song or artist and then it starts to create the radio station for you. The cool thing about your radio station is that Pandora Radio allows you to give your feedback on each song. When the song is playing you can select thumbs up or thumbs down, and if you click in the center of the tile for that song you can say that you don't want it played anymore. I don't know know about anyone else but that is a feature I wished the regular radio had! One of the stations that I decided to create was a Christmas station. I love the song "White Christmas" and entered that as my song to base the radio station on. So far this radio station has been a blast. You can check out any of my radio stations I've created by visiting my profile http://www.pandora.com/people/hddick#. I could see myself using Pandora Radio in my classroom during creative writing times. It would allow a teacher to access different songs/artists without having to spend a ton of money on all the cds.

My tips for Pandora Radio are pretty simple. Have fun! This site is a great way to find new, different music! I absolutley love music so I've enjoyed this site because it has allowed me to find artist similar to some of my favorite artists. It's also given me different versions of some of my favortite Christmas songs. Also don't be afraid to click on the different buttons. In the menu section at the center of each song you can ask "why was this song selected?". This feature is so cool because it'll explain the connection of the song or the artist to your original selection.

Enjoy your new radio stations!