SARAH TOWLE

AUTHOR * PODCASTER * PRESENTER * EDUCATOR * COACH

Excavating the secrets, scandals, and untold stories hiding below the surface of life, and giving voice to the characters who make or made those hiStories happen.

Horrible Histories meets Lonely Planet AND Pokémon GO

July 15, 2016 in App Development, Beware Mme la Guillotine, Cultural Education, Digital Publishing, Educational Tourism, History Turned On, News chez TTT&T, Story App Tour, Buried Alive

Horrible Histories meets Lonely Planet AND Pokémon GO

Great news from TTT&T Head-quarters: We’ve just completed the first full build of In the Footsteps of Giants, our time-traveling tour to Renaissance Florence, and it's looking great!

As luck would have it, we seem to be launching at exactly the right time too. Who knew?

Last Tuesday, I received this gorgeous message from a young fan, one of the original pilot-testers of Beware Madame la Guillotine. She wrote:

“Sarah, have you seen Pokémon GO? Your Time Traveler Tours are the same thing, only better, because they teach cool facts and skills!”

Her message was like a magical salve. I'd been hacking for many days straight at that point and a fatigue reminiscent of my Kickstarter days had settled in. I'd also been feeling a bit hopeless -- perhaps because of the fatigue? -- in the face of the violence and intolerance that has gripped our world. These enthusiastic words immediately strengthened my resolve to harness today's popular technologies to Turn History On.

Because the risk is too great if we allow the past to be forgotten...

What Do All Tech-based Projects, from Apple to Zillow, Have in Common?

July 01, 2016 in App Development, Digital Publishing, News chez TTT&T, Buried Alive, Time Traveler Tales

What Do All Tech-based Projects, from Apple to Zillow, Have in Common?

Launch Delays. That's what!

And at Time Traveler Tours & Tales (TTT&T), we are no exception. On my trip to the States earlier this month, I gathered members of team TTT&T as well as a dedicated group of major supporters to alpha-test the first iteration of IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GIANTS.

It was exciting. It was fun. It was also very tasty for apropos the Renaissance Italian theme of our launch story app tour, we met at an NYC restaurant: Osteria del Principe. Highly recommended!

Our hope was to be able to turn the app right over to YOU for beta testing. But we encountered two unanticipated technical issues too serious not to fix.

(If you want to know more about what these were, continue reading...)

On History, Creativity, Serendipity, and Gelato

April 12, 2016 in App Development, Bologna Children's Book F, Cultural Education, Digital Publishing, Educational Tourism, Kickstarter, Museum Education, Story App Tour, Buried Alive

On History, Creativity, Serendipity, and Gelato

Once upon a time, my memories of Florence fell to hunting for treasures in and around the top 10 tourist attractions with a four-year-old. And, of course, gelato. My favorite flavors were the citrus sorbets, like lemon, lime, and blood orange.

Then, exactly two years ago in April 2014, both my gelato preferences and my association with Florence changed. Radically. That's when Mary Hoffman and I, as co-faculty of Julie Hedlund’s Writer’s Renaissance, first brainstormed, over una coppetta di gelato tre gusti – this time cioccolato, pistachio, and nocciola, how we might bring my time traveler tour concept to life in Florence...

Thinking of Going Digital? Here are Five Tips to Help you Pick the Perfect Development Partner

March 25, 2016 in App Development, Beware Mme la Guillotine, Cultural Education, Digital Publishing, Educational Tourism, History Turned On, Museum Education, Story App Tour, Buried Alive

Thinking of Going Digital? Here are Five Tips to Help you Pick the Perfect Development Partner

We’re Engaged!

Join me in welcoming OnCell, LLC, as Time Traveler Tours, LLC's new development partner!

Now some of you might be imagining a group of guys with various color pens lined up in their pocket protectors, repeatedly pushing thick rimmed glasses back up onto the bridges of their noses. Not Team OnCell. These peeps are young, dynamic, hip, creative, and anything but a boys club. They speak the languages of code and user experience design and visual storytelling. They have made it possible for me and Team TTT&T to bring our unique storytelling concept to you on the touchscreen device of your choice. Here are a few members of the OnCell team:

Story App Production: It's a Team Sport

March 10, 2016 in App Development, Digital Publishing, History Turned On, Publishing Industry, Story App Tour

Story App Production: It's a Team Sport

Once upon a time, some crazy smart person got the idea of taking a children’s story previously passed down through oral storytelling and turning it into a book. This spawned a whole new tradition, and an industry that has thrived for centuries with a work-flow process that involves several distinct phases and teams and can take several years to complete the goal of creating an illustrated story book.

It works like this...