The Internet is amazing. It contains a massive amount of valuable content that we all can consume and it also allows the opportunity for all of us to digitally connect with each other. So cool! But you know what else? In addition to the Internet being awesome, it’s also kinda . . . weird.
Wouldn’t you agree with me? It’s weird, right?
I’m sure I can’t be the only person on this planet who has stumbled across something weird while surfing on the Internet. From silly beard pictures to silly man baby pictures (yes, man babies), if you use the Internet as much as I do, you’re bound to discover something weird at least once a day. I guess that’s just one of the things that makes going online so fun – the high probability of discovering something weird.
Weird is fun, so keep track of weird. Seriously.
Whenever something weird shows itself to me when I’m on the Internet, I immediately grab a pen and paper to jot down the URL. Why do I do this? Because I want to remember that particular weird thing so I can show the middle schoolers I work with. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from working with middle school students over the last few years, it’s that this demographic LOVES weird Internet stuff. They eat it up!
Weird is good because it triggers sharing and conversation.
Picture this, you’re on your laptop and you stumble across a weird website online. One of the first things, if not THEE first thing you’ll do is tell someone about the weird website. You’ll lean over to whoever is sitting next to you and say, “Hey! Check this out! Have you ever seen this weird website before!?” That’s who we are as human beings. We are sharing creatures who truly enjoy the act of talking about something with someone else. And when that something is weird, we want to talk about it and share it even more. So it only makes sense that when our speech therapy students see something weird on the Internet, it usually triggers lots of sharin’ and talkin’!
Have you seen any weird websites lately?
I have seen oodles and oodles of weird websites over the last few months and I’m so excited to share the weirdness with you. It’s my hope that after you read this blog post, you’ll be able to pull out your laptop or iPad during your next speech therapy session and somehow incorporate a few of these websites into a speech therapy activity or two. I promise you that each one of these 7 weird websites will motivate your students and get them engaged in some fantastic conversations. Oh, and just so you know, each of these weird websites are kid-friendly, so no need to worry about anything inappropriate unexpectedly popping up. Nothing bad here on these websites. Just a bunch of kid-friendly weirdness.
- BaconSizzling.com is a weird website that features one thing and one thing only, the sights and sounds of bacon sizzling. Before visiting this website with my students, I usually ask them to make a prediction as to what they think BaconSizzling.com might have on it. Almost no one takes the domain name literally so you can only imagine the laughs when they do see that the website is simply just a looping video of bacon sizzling. So many laughs!
- FallingFalling.com is a weird website that features an array of downward moving colors that seem to fall in unison with an odd sound. It’s both visually beautiful and sort of eerie. When my students see FallingFalling.com for the first time, we try to talk about WHY a person might want to create a weird website like that. I’ve heard some pretty creative responses within the speech therapy room and I know you will, too!
- GiantBatFarts.com is a weird website that’s a bit on the disgusting side, but it’s a silly disgusting. As you can probably guess by the name, GiantBatFarts.com features a bunch of random bats flying around and farting. Nothing more and nothing less. One time, my 6th grade students were learning about bats in one of their other classes so I collected a bunch of short reading passages about bats and then, as a closer right before we ran out of time, we visited GiantBatFarts.com. They were laughing so hard and it was the perfect way to end that particular speech therapy session!
- RandomColour.com is a weird website that randomly generates a new color each time you visit it. That’s it. I usually use this weird website as a foundation for a type of categorizing game I like to play. What I’ll do is have RandomColour.com generate a new color, one at a time, and ask the students to name as many things as they can that are the color that was just randomly generated. It’s a neat way to target categorizing goals and objectives, for sure!
- TacoSpin.com is a weird website that features a spinning taco in the middle of the screen that plays the song Girls Just Want To Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper in the background. What I love about the spinning taco is that there’s a counter attached to the taco that actually counts how many complete spins the taco makes. So in the past, I’ve turned the volume off and used TacoSpin.com as a visual timer of sorts where I would say to my students something like, “Ok, after the taco spins 500 times, then we can take a break. But until then, we have to work on (whatever the activity or worksheet is).” They usually laugh very hard and start talking about the math behind how long 500 taco spins would actually be. And for the record, they’ve figured out it’s approximately 2.3 seconds for every 1 spin!
- CornDogOnCornDog.com is similar to the spinning taco website in that it also plays fun music in the background. Thanks to CornDogOnCornDog.com, I’ve been known to shout, “It’s corndog time!” when I noticed my students getting a bit antsy in their seats after working hard on an activity. In my speech therapy room, corndog time means we are taking a movement break that involves getting out of our seats for a few seconds. So once I make my corndog announcement, I type CornDogOnCornDog.com into my laptop, turn the volume up, and we all start dancing around our chairs. It’s an awesome way to take a brain break!
- Cat-Bounce.com is a weird website that features a bunch of cats bouncing around. It’s hilarious. There’s also a “make it rain!” button that can be tapped to add even more cats into the mix. In the past, I’ve used the Cat-Bounce.com website during the same session where my students and I used lots of funny cat pictures to target a bunch of different goals and objectives. I’m not even kitten you right now, this weird website is purr-fect for cat lovers!
In closing . . .
I could go on and on and share even more weird websites with you (YourNameInGum.com and IsMyComputerOn.com are two others that come to mind) but this post is already getting way too long so I figured I’d conclude it here. Do you know of any other weird websites? If so, please do reach out to me with the URL and let me know how you incorporate your weird discovery in your speech therapy room. Thanks in advance for sharing the weirdness! You rock!
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.