As I do every year, Im taking this week 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.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without approval.

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive utilized for many years. As a registered user I can produce custom-made, shortened URLs that individuals can really 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..

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

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

Applications for Education.
Building excellent digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities is something that everyone need to be assisting our trainees do. Revealing them little pointers like this one to prevent clicking on suspicious links is one of the manner ins which we can assist our students construct their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

There is a simple way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The technique is to simply add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was.
You can try this technique with a URL that I recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly 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 discussion URL and see when I created the reduced URL..
Watch this short video to see how you can use the “+” trick to find out whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive used for numerous years. There is an easy way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. The technique is to simply 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.