Educational Tourism

App Store Meta Data: In Search of the Perfect Keywords

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App Store Meta Data: In Search of the Perfect Keywords

We're one week away! 

All the creative assets are completed and loaded into the app; all the pages are designed; all the buttons added; all the images are hotspotted. Everything is wired together. Three rounds of beta-testing have brought excellent changes and primed the engine.

All that's left is to write the App Store Meta Data. But here's the rub: I'm hopeless with metadata.  

Metadata is "data that describes other data." And that's the kind of definition that just makes this already very tired head spin. More to the point: It's keywords and other snippets of information that make it possible for you to search for and locate a specific document in the intertoobz.

But here's why it's important to our process right now...

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Horrible Histories meets Lonely Planet AND Pokémon GO

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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...

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Weaving History into Your Family Vacation

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Weaving History into Your Family Vacation

The summer travel season is in full swing. Opportunities abound to escape "normal" life, create cherished memories with the family, and share your passions with your children through a non-school lens.

Guaranteed: No matter where you travel this summer, you’ll be in a place steeped in backstories of historical importance.

So how do you weave that history into your family vacation?

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14 Off-the-Beaten-Track Florence Must Dos

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14 Off-the-Beaten-Track Florence Must Dos

My daughter Lily texted today with the news: Just finished my last exam of the semester!

That can mean only one thing: Summer will soon be upon us!

For those of you heading to Florence, Italy this year, I hope you'll find the following tips and recommendations useful. You can download a pdf of the same information to take with you to Florence by clicking here. 

Or read on here...

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On History, Creativity, Serendipity, and Gelato

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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...

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