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

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive used for several years. As a registered user I can create custom, shortened URLs that people can really spell. I utilize these whenever I require 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 always long..

Applications for Education.
Building excellent digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that everyone should be assisting our students do. Revealing them little ideas like this one to avoid clicking on suspicious links is among the ways that we can assist our trainees build their digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive used for lots of years. There is a simple method to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without actually 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 rather of to whatever the original URL was.

If you wish 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 original link without clicking on it.

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

Not all Bitly users are utilizing them for excellent reasons. Some people use them to hide dubious links. Thankfully, there is an easy method 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 include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly rather 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 try this technique with a URL that I recently reduced. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you straight to a copy of the slides that I used 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 initial discussion URL and see when I created the reduced URL..
See this short video to see how you can use the “+” technique to find out whats hidden behind a Bitly link..