URL Shortening
Have you ever been to or viewed an online presentation where a web link was on the screen that you could not click on, and took you a whole minute - or even longer - to write down? URL shorteners, like TinyURL.com, bit.ly, ow.ly, is.gd and many others, make it possible to present a super short URL that is much quicker to write down or connect to in your web browser. TinyURL, for example, can change something like this: sites.google.com/site/ctltteachingtoolkit into something like this: tinyurl.com/jhsphtoolkit.
Keep in mind that not all URL shorteners allow you to choose your own custom alias as we have above, with "jhsphtoolkit" - some will assign random letters and numbers into your shortened URL. We prefer the following that allow you to add your own custom alias (as long as someone else hasn't taken it already):
One other feature you might enjoy is that some of these tools include the ability to track how many people use the shortened URL. Here's a page with more info on some of these handy tools, which we highly recommend for a more user-friendly presentation.