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Applications for Education.
Building excellent digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that everyone ought to be helping our trainees do. Showing them little pointers like this one to avoid clicking suspicious links is one of the ways that we can help our students construct their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive utilized for numerous years. As a signed up user I can produce customized, shortened URLs that individuals can in fact spell. I utilize these whenever I require to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation because the default URLs supplied by those services are incoherent and always long..

If you wish to attempt this with a TinyURL, tinyurl.com/emkns9a8 will lead you to the page for the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp, however including a “+” at the end of that TinyURL will take you to the page where you can see the original link without clicking on it.

Heres a video overview of how to see whats behind a TinyURL without actually clicking the link.

As I do every year, Im taking this week as a break from publishing brand-new blog site posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Heres one from April.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive utilized for lots of years. There is an easy method to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The technique is to simply include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was.

Unfortunately, not all Bitly users are using them for good reasons. Some individuals utilize them to conceal dubious links. There is an easy method to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. The trick is to just include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will show you what the original link was..
You can attempt this trick with a URL that I recently reduced. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you straight to a copy of the slides that I utilized in my recent Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my original presentation URL and see when I developed the reduced URL..
Enjoy this short video to see how you can use the “+” technique to discover whats concealed behind a Bitly link..