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

Applications for Education.
Structure great digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities is something that everybody need to be helping our students do. Showing them little tips like this one to prevent clicking on suspicious links is among the manner ins which we can help our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it somewhere else, it has actually been used without consent.

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

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

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive used for lots of years. There is an easy way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. The trick is to merely add 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.

Sadly, not all Bitly users are utilizing them for excellent reasons. Some individuals utilize them to conceal nefarious links. There is a simple method to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. The trick is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will show you what the initial link was..
You can try this technique with a URL that I just recently reduced. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you straight to a copy of the slides that I used in my current Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my initial presentation URL and see when I developed the shortened URL..
Watch this short video to see how you can utilize the “+” technique to discover whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive used for many years. As a signed up user I can create custom-made, reduced URLs that individuals can actually spell. I use these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation due to the fact that the default URLs provided by those services are incoherent and constantly long..