Best of 2021 – See What’s Behind Bitly and TinyURL Without Clicking
As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from April. Bitly is a handy URL shortener that I’ve used for many years. As a registered user I can create custom, shortened […]
See What’s Behind a Bitly Link Without Clicking On It
Bitly is a convenient tool for creating short URLs to share in place of long URLs. I’ve used it for years to create customized URLs that are easy for my students to type. Unfortunately, some people use Bitly to try to mask URLs to try to get you to click on nefarious links. Fortunately, there […]
What’s Hidden Behind a Bitly Link?
Bitly is a handy URL shortener that I’ve used for many years. As a registered user I can create custom, shortened URLs that people can actually spell. I use these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation because the default URLs provided by those services are always long […]
Three Ways to Create Shortened URLs People Can Actually Spell
Whenever I have a webpage that I want a group of students or colleagues to go to at the same time, I use a URL shortener to turn long URLs into things that are easy to copy and spell. Sure, I could email the link in advance or post it on Google Classroom, but when […]
The Half-life of Links and School Social Media Plans
In Randy Krum’s book, Cool Infographics (disclosure, he gave me a copy) he shares that according to research done by Bitly, the half-life of a link on Twitter and Facebook is 2.8 and 3.2 hours respectively. The half-life of a link refers to the amount of time it takes for a link to reach one-half […]
Bitly vs. Goo.gl
I recently received an email from a long-time reader who wanted to know my opinion of using Bitly compared to Goo.gl for shortening and sharing URLs. I have a slight preference for Bitly, but I don’t think that you can go wrong by using either tool to shorten and share URLs. Here’s my quick comparison […]
Handy Web Tools That Solve Three Problems for Every Classroom
Whether we teach seven year old students or seventeen year old students there are some universal problems that we all have to handle in our classrooms. The following three handy tools can help you solve those problems. Staying on Schedule When I have long blocks of time with students I like to schedule short breaks […]
5 Ways to Quickly Get Your Students On the Same Webpage
Getting all of your students on the same webpage at once is one of the small and annoying challenges of using websites and web tools in your classroom. Fortunately, there are some simple solutions to this challenge. The solution that you pick will be partially based upon the type of devices that your students use […]