Shorten those links with Tinyurl

One problem I've had when trying to share a link with students is getting them to copy it correctly from the board / projector... and I don't always have time to post a link onto my team's webpage or discussion board before a class starts.

But there's a great way to fix this.  Just go to...

What does it do?  It takes a long obnoxious address like this one, I used in class as part of a presentation: 
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1a33-EYqmNrUMFJCNGZyWPiB6sROedPyRnPktC33DPU8/edit

and turns it into this:
http://tinyurl.com/critical-steps

Much better! 

All you need to do is go to tinyurl.com, and paste the URL into the address box:

You can then just click the "make tinyURL" button and the site will assign it a short string of letters and numbers, or you can enter what you want its name to be in the "Custom alias" box.


This makes it easy to share links that are simple, and easy to remember.

You can even install a quick button into your toolbar, so that, with one click, you can shorten the link for any page you are on.

This can be really useful when giving kids links for a project - shorten each one to the project name and a number (science1, science2, etc.), so they're grouped and easy to remember.

Per usual, you can find this tip and all the other ones on our blog, at http://smstechtips.blogspot.com/

Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions, and stay tuned for information about an upcoming mini-course in Google Docs!

Derek & Jeremy