"The City of Lights was once made bright by the flash of a revolution’s guillotine, and this app provides a glimpse into one of Paris' pivotal backstories... through the eyes of one if its key players, satisfying both historian and eager tourist."
Under its new imprint, Time Traveler Tales, the 1st interactive book published by Time Traveler Tours will hit iBookstores worldwide on 6 February 2013. Simultaneously, our resident tech guru has just launched his own Mac App, a handy tool for syncing your recently opened files with the cloud called Quicksand.
To mark this auspicious double occasion, we felt it the perfect time to introduce TTT Tech Guru, Sebastian Hallum Clarke: the young man behind all things tech at Time Traveler Tours and Tales.
Hi Sebastian! Why don't you start by telling us a bit about yourself.
Sure! My name is Sebastian Hallum Clarke, I’m 15 years old, and I live in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. I’ve always had a strong interest in technology, and it’s been great to put this in practice though my work with Time Traveler Tours. I’ve moved around a lot, having lived in New York, London, and most recently Paris, where I met Sarah. I love traveling. I speak English, French and a small amount of Spanish. I joined the TTT team in May 2012.
Tell us about the projects you've worked on during your time with Time Traveler Tours?
When I started at TTT, my first big project was revamping the company’s social media pages. Facebook had just introduced their new timeline design, so I worked with Sarah to reorganise the content, and to help position TTT’s social media strategy to better engage with users.
(In fact, we're putting together a Facebook launch right now to promote the interactive book. The fun starts on Sunday, 3 Feb, with a Book Giveaway and continues on Wednesday -- release day -- with an FB event. Head on over there now and like our page to be eligible for a free giveaway of the book.)
My next, still ongoing project was working on helping prepare the TTT for its next big step in mobile app offerings. I can’t say much about this at the moment, but I can tell you that it involved a lot of wireframes, and when it’s released, it will completely revolutionise the way you think about visiting historical locations.
We knew that our iOS app was a fantastic way for people visiting Paris to learn about the frightening time in history that was the French Revolution, but we also knew that there were many people all around the world who can’t make it to Paris who would still like to learn about Charlotte’s adventures.
In early 2012, when Apple announced that a new format of interactive books for the iPad would debut in its iBookstore, we instantly knew that it would be a fantastic way for people all over the world to immerse themselves in the captivating story of Beware Madame La Guillotine. We saw that through the exciting usage of interactive media, like audio-visual content and games, we could bring the magic of the city of lights to history students and armchair travelers at home.
What was your role in the production of the interactive book?
My main job was dealing with the technical end of the publication. Every week, Sarah would send me a couple of chapters which she had adapted from the iOS app. I would then go into iBooks Author, Apple’s tool for creating interactive books, and paste the text into the book. I’d drop in the images connected to that chapter, and then add in the interactive content that Sarah had written to go along with the story. Then it would be back to Sarah to sort out the layout for each page, and make sure that all of the design elements were correctly presented.
How did you find the experience of creating a book destined for the iBookstore?
Getting a grip on how the whole iBooks publishing system works certainly took a while. It’s immensely powerful, but not for the faint of heart. We had several hiccups along the way, but that’ll be for another blog post!
Thanks Sebastian!
Indeed, stay tuned for more about this remarkable technical wizard who the TTT could not currently do without. There's much more to learn about this fascinating young man. Don't for get to check out his website.
Now, go forth and like the TTT so you can be eligible to win a free copy of the interactive book!
On February 6, 2013, Time Traveler Tours brings to the iBookstore the same award-winning concept it pioneered in the App Store – history through story and games – under the imprint Time Traveler Tales.
A mash up of the American Girl series (but global) and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (but focused on history),Time Traveler Tales interactive books reveal the past through creative non-fiction storytelling and interactive games.
As with their mobile iTineraries, each story in the coming Time Traveler Tales collection is a 1st person account of history by a figure whose actions helped shape that time. Tales are rooted in historical fact and illustrated with full-color period artwork. They are peppered throughout with interactive images and maps, multiple-choice questions, and puzzles that extend and enhance reader understanding of the narrators’ place and époque.
Targeted to youth, ages 12 and up, Time Traveler Tales are perfect companions for history, social studies, and humanities classrooms the world over.
They also make great reading for history buffs and armchair travelers.
The first interactive book in the collection, Beware Madame La Guillotine, is a trip back in time to the French Revolution, narrated by 24-year-old school-girl-turned-murderess, Charlotte Corday. While in prison and awaiting execution by guillotine, Charlotte recounts her personal journey through Paris at the time of the French Revolution. Explaining how and why she stabbed radical propagandist Jean-Paul Marat, she leads the reader from the Palais Royal, where she bought her murder weapon, to her prison, the Conciergerie, the Revolution’s antechamber to the guillotine.
As Charlotte weaves her yarn, she demystifies in a way that is captivating, yet comprehensible, the complex, cataclysmic, paradigmatic social shift set off by the French Revolution that rocked not only her nation, but eventually the world. She leaves readers wondering if violence is ever justified.
Time Traveler Tours & Tales Founder and Creative Director, Sarah Towle, is a career educator, writer, and inveterate traveler who moved to Paris in 2004. Frustrated by a lack of engaging cultural opportunities for youth, she began writing story-based historical itineraries for her then-preteen daughter. She knew she’d found the perfect delivery mechanism for these Tours when she held an iPhone in her hand for the first time.
The unveiling of Apple’s iBooks Author in 2012 opened yet a new door for Sarah and the Time Traveler Tours concept, enabling her to republish her Tours as Tales for the benefit of students and educators.
Combining the traditional power of narrative with the latest in technology, Time Traveler Tours & Tales put the past in the palm of your hand and allow you to discover history with those who made it.
Beware Madame La Guillotine: The French Revolution with Charlotte Corday will be available in iBookstores worldwide from February 6, 2013, for the introductory price of USD 4.99.
To request an advance copy for review, and/or schedule an interview, please contact Sarah Towle: stowle@timetravelertours.com.
At Time Traveler Tours and Tales (coming soon!) we aim to revolutionize educational travel and historical scholarship by bringing the very best in non-fiction interactive storytelling to the mobile and tablet formats.
How do we do it?
By offering young people a “way in” to history in the most engaging, compelling, and meaningful way we know how:
through the stories of those who made it, flavored with interactivity.
History through Story and Games,
in the Palm of your Hand.
Storytelling is the oldest human art form. Everyone loves a good yarn. And we believe that history is best approached, understood, and enjoyed through the eyes of those who lived it.
Each of our Tours (and soon, our Tales) take time-travelers back through the ages with a narrator whose actions helped shape their time. In telling their stories, our protagonists reveal the passions, breakthroughs, secrets and scandals of the eras, providing a vivid contextual understanding of their experience and the importance or their historical moment.
Imagine that you’d just ripped your eight-year old away from the life she knew and loved and then informed her that she’d be spending the summer holidays going to language school with mom. How do you think she’d react?
If you said, not well, you’d be exactly right…
(Add to this already dubious equation that school happens to be in France, and you get double the trouble. But more on this anon.)
…for as those of you with kids will know, when their world isn’t right, and they aren’t sure why, and they can’t find the words to express how they feel, they act out. And that’s what happened with Loo.
So while I was trying my darnedest to make the best of a difficult situation, to keep a smile on my face, and to brainstorm creative solutions, Loo was folding further and further in on herself like a child’s origami fortune teller, begging me to provide the answers to a multitude of questions that she could not yet articulate. This was helping neither my confidence nor my credibility as a mother. Thus, the former mother-daughter dream team – and we had been just that – were plunging ever deeper into a downward spiral.
Sancerre was going to save us!
We arrived at our apartment at the summit of this ancient hilltop town filled with hope for good days ahead. The place was lovely, one vast room richly decorated with red velvet drapes trimmed with gold piping. The ceiling was so high it could have accommodated LeBron James comfortably. The new towels and sheets were luxuriously soft, as if they'd never been used before. The galley kitchen was appointed with all the appliances and utensils necessary to prepare three square meals for an entire family, despite its being intended for only two. And the views out the windows, over the vineyards crawling with ripening fruit on one side and the medieval stone town on the other, were exquisite.
But we quickly discovered the reason why this apartment remained unused this deep into the summer: It was in a bell tower. The bell tolled to hour every hour on the hour, splitting our head open with each ring, even at night.
Then there was the weather. It was cold – even colder than Paris – and gray. All plans to spend our free time from school lounging by the glorious Sancerre community pool, located on the banks of the Loire River, remained locked up in our shared chest-of-drawers along with our swim suits.
The only activities left to us besides learning French were wine-tasting, which Loo could not and did not want to do, and cooking. So we cooked a great deal, availing ourselves to the fresh produce of the nearby farmer’s market as well as to the frequent cooking classes sponsored by our language school. We did visit a goat cheese farm in nearby Chavignol, which is known far and wide for its chevre, and went to a local cultural festival one weekend. These were the fun moments.
But school itself was not. It was boring, especially for Loo. As a linguist and language teacher, I was dumb-founded, daily, at the myriad ways in which the curriculum, in general, and our teacher, in particular, missed opportunities for interactive learning. Though I threw myself into the exercise, happy to be doing something productive, I chaffed at the teaching methodologies, which were devoid of any real context and completely inappropriate for a child. Loo became progressively more turned off by the rote learning of pattern drills set up in the fake dialogues proposed by the school’s one-and-only workbook.
It’s stupid! She’d say, pushing the book away from her when we’d hunkered down of an evening of homework assignments.
I’m never going to talk to people like these characters or have conversations like this about their dumb kites. Why can’t they teach us real stuff? Why do I have to learn French from a stupid book?
Okay, so Loo wasn’t always as inarticulate as I might have led you too believe, above. And she was right. She was also angry and spared no opportunity to direct her frustrations at me.
I empathized, but I also insisted we stick with it, assuring her that real school would be better, that the teachers in Sancerre – although very nice people – simply lacked formal training in how to teach kids. I promised her that her new school in Paris, chock full of teachers dedicated to teaching kids her age, would have much more sensible books and materials.
So Loo suffered through the workbook exercises and by the end of our stay in Sancerre, she’d completed the first-level book and actually felt proud of the accomplishment. On the way out of town, we made a great ceremony of chucking the book in the town’s paper recycling bin.
We returned to Paris ready to turn a new page (pun intended), and there, waiting in a pile of unopened mail, was a welcome packet from Loo’s new school. It contained a list of books and supplies to be purchased prior to her first day. Guess what title appeared among the list of textbooks needed for French? That’s right. The same dreadful workbook she had just completed. The one she hated. The one she’d gleefully thrown away. The one her French class would be working through for the next several months, until the winter holidays.
I am NOT doing that again! She exclaimed. This did not bode well, neither for her success in school nor for my parental credibility.
We had no way of knowing it at the time, but our trial with the French education system was already well under way.
In the spring of 1789, France faced a crippling financial crisis. King Louis XVI called for a meeting of the Estates General – equal numbers of representatives from the nobility, clergy, and Third Estate (that is, everyone else) – to help him resolve the situation.
No French King had convened the Estates General for over 150 years. So, new delegates to the counseling body had to be selected from all corners of the country.
In June, 12,000 delegates to the Estates General arrived at Versailles, each sporting the dress of their social class:
The Third Estate wore plain black suits and three corner hats.
The nobility were bedecked in silks and plumes.
The clergy shouldered their traditional violet vestments.
They came to help resolve France’s financial problems. They came to usher in a new, golden age for France. They carried with them the hope and optimism of the entire French nation. Confidence reigned.
But it quickly soured.
The Third Estate demanded more voting power. They did, after all, represent 96% of the French population. But they had only as many votes as the clergy and nobility, and these two always voted with the monarchy.
The demand of the Third Estate did not sit well with the King. He locked them out of the meeting.
But with the hopes and dreams of the entire nation weighing heavily on their shoulders, the Third Estate refused to leave Versailles. They held their own meeting in the king’s indoor games court, the Jeu de Paume, the only place big enough to accommodate their numbers and shelter them from the storm that raged like their fury with the old regime.
They proclaimed themselves “the true representatives of the French people.” They named themselves The National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates, but of “The People”: France’s new government.
Forty-seven nobles and many clergy as well left the king’s meeting to join the National Assembly, among them Louis-Philippe Joseph II, Duc d’Orleans. They pledged an oath to write France her first constitution.
It seemed the Revolution was won.
But King Louis XVI was not so quick to recognize France’s new, self-proclaimed government. Where did it put him? Where did it leave his son, the dauphin, the future King of France? As he awaited the new constitution, he grew anxious of the rumble back in Paris. He sent troops to surround the city.
Parisians grew scared of the weapons now pointing at them.
***
Exerpt from: Beware Madame la Guillotine, A Revolutionary Tour of Paris. For more information or to purchase, click here.
Monday, September 16, 2013 at 8:17AM Tweet 
