Shortening Your URL

For the first idea, this is one that is rather simple and quite a few people probably know about it.  However there are still quite a few that don't and so it seems like an easy one to start with.  It won't revolutionize your classroom in any way, but it will make it easier to share some websites with other people.

I was reading this article on Assistive Technology with iPads.  I could share this document with somebody and give them the URL (http://www.techlearning.com/article/ipads-ipod-touches-and-iphones-as-assistive-technology-in-education/47768).  From there I would have to hope that this becomes a click-able link for them, or that they can highlight and copy the whole part into the article without missing a key part of the link.  However, what if I also wanted to share this with a group in a meeting?  I could email it to them, once again hoping they all can either click or copy the whole thing.  I could try and write this on the board and hope they type it in correctly.  I know this doesn't seem very difficult, but it can be time consuming, especially if people have to type it in.  I've had a group of kids take more than 10 minutes getting them to the same webpage before.

What if instead you could give them a link like these:
http://tinyurl.com/bm9yy6e
http://goo.gl/M8tzD
http://bit.ly/yMsIbL
http://tiny.cc/jljmw

All of these take you to the same article, but you can see how much shorter they are.  Each one also only took about 20 seconds to make on each site.  I can pass this along and have something smaller that is easier to copy and put into a web browser. All are made on websites that store the longer url and will redirect people to the correct site instead.  So when I enter http://goo.gl/M8tzD into Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. it goes to the Google storage area, finds what link it should be, and then takes you to the correct page.  The user doesn't even realize what is happening.  This idea became especially big with Twitter where people only have so many characters to post, so to share a webpage it had to have a short url.

These are the different sites I used to make each of those:
Tiny URL
Google URL Shortener
bitly
Tiny.cc

On each webpage you just paste in the long URL into the blank hit the button that says to "Shorten", "Make tiny", etc. and immediately you'll be given a smaller URL to copy and give to other people.  To make it even better some sites let you customize it to make it even easier for people to know what this shortened URL will go to.  On the Tiny URL site and the Tiny.cc site there is spot by where you enter your longer link to put in a customized ending.  I can now make it http://tiny.cc/assistiveipads for the URL making it easier for people to read.  Google URL Shortener does not offer this service and bitly allows you to this if you login, which you can do with a Twitter account or Facebook account.

So this is a simple idea that could potentially save you tons of time anywhere you may use a URL in your classroom, whether with students or other staff members.  Hopefully if you try it you'll see how easy it can really be.