Bit.ly

Think about the last time you tried to get all the students in your classroom on the same webpage at the same time. How long did it take to make that happen?

If the URL (short for Uniform Resource Locator) for that page was something like this http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22C6LEW85F/ (CTE Sr Survey) and you wrote it on the whiteboard in your room or you projected it on a screen, it probably took longer than you would have liked to get every student on that page.

There is and easy-to-use tool to fix that problem and it is called Bit.ly.

Bit.ly is a URL shortening service. Anytime you have a long, complicated URL you can use Bit.ly to shorten it down to something much more manageable.

You can create a free Bit.ly account you can customize your shortened URL to make it even more manageable.

For example, it's far easier for me to direct people to http://bit.ly/dKSQZd than it is to http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22C6L3EW85F/. You can use Bit.ly by copying a URL and pasting it into Bit.ly.

Try Bit.ly the next time you're setting up a lesson plan that requires all of your students to enter a long complicated URL.

You can find the link to Bit.ly below and over to the right under Cool Free Stuff.

http://bit.ly/