About

History Adventures, World of Characters, Revolutions & Industrialization, 1750-1900 –

History Adventures, World of Characters

Revolutions & Industrialization

1750-1900

A digital learning product for a digital generation 

The future of history education is now.

History Adventures, World of Characters is a fully interactive digital book series I’m developing with an international team of animators, artists, designers, and historians. The product represents a fresh approach to history education, designed for today’s digital generation. This multimodal learning experience combines the latest in mobile entertainment with the power of narrative design—bringing the pages of history to life.

The goal of the product is twofold:

1. to ignite a lifelong fascination for learning about history, and
2. to prepare students for the AP World History: Modern exam.

Three key design concepts make History Adventures a uniquely impactful learning experience:

1. The product utilizes an innovative, cross-disciplinary history curriculum, that synthesizes the AP World History curriculum, (industry standard for college level prep and accreditation) with our own custom-designed curriculum, optimized for digital learning, (featuring contributions from several Education City, Qatar-based historians, who also appear in-product as animated narrators).

2. History Adventures leverages the latest in mobile entertainment design—combining motion comics, cinematics, animation, branching paths, original music, and sound design—to make the learning experience compelling, intuitive, and fun.

3. And finally, History Adventures utilizes the power of story, narrativizing the experiences of people who lived in past centuries—in different epochs and locations around the globe. Students will witness the very real moments these very real people lived through, as if they were there. And via the empathy inspired by quality storytelling, students will feel the life or death stakes of decisions made in the moment.

The big picture goal of History Adventures, World of Characters is to make the connection between past and present more visceral, tangible, and real—and in the process spark enthusiasm for learning about the past… and bring the pages of history to life.

History Adventures | Project Timeline

  • November 2015: Presented early stage interaction design research as part UAE Innovation Week, showcasing MadeFire MotionBook technology.
  • June 2016: Awarded Summer Research Institute Fellowship to the Harris Manchester College at Oxford; conducted design and curriculum research
  • July 2016: Digital Learning design research presentation delivered at the International Big History Association Conference in Amsterdam
  • Fall 2016: FTO Awarded, time is used to develop project pre-alpha, which is completed by December of 2016
  • April 2, 2017: Dr. Jonathan Markley, leading Big Historian, comes to AUD campus and speaks as part of Visual Forums Series. Topic: Innovating Visual Educational Multimedia. Partnership with the IBHA formed.
  • April 9, 2017: presented first live demo as part of Visual Forum Series to an audience in the VC Rotunda, showcasing key features in early stage.
  • May 17, 2017: Out of over 700 entries, the digital learning concept wins 5th place in the Dubai Smartpreneur 2.0 Competition, as part of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce Smart City Initiative.
  • Nov 7-9, 2017: Big History Adventures receives competitive invitation to exhibit live demo on the showroom floor of Web Summit 2017, the largest technology conference in the world, which will be the first live demo for an international audience.
  • Nov 15, 2017: Presented “worked example” digital media and learning research at EduTECH Middle East, Dubai.
  • March 28, 2018: Live hands-on demo on display as official selection to 2018 Step Conference.
  • November 2018: From stealth mode to soft launch..
  • Dec 12, 2018: History Adventures, Ch. III Conscribo, goes live on iTunes in 52 countries!
  • Feb 13, 2019: hands-on demo of v2.0, as official selection to the 2019 Step Conference.
  • Feb 22, 2019: First demo of History Adventures for Asian audience at Slush Tokyo, Japan
  • April 2019: Development of History Adventures version 2.0 begins, with new technology strategy intended for content scalability. 
  • August 2019: Early prototype of version 2.0 completed. 
  • September 1 – December 31, 2019: Intensive version 2.0 development cycle.
  • January 31, 2020: History Adventures, World of Characters, Book 3: 1750-1900 goes live with 5 fully interactive, animated, multimodal historical narrative chapters.  
  • February 1 – May 1, 2020: Intensive development cycle of Empires & Interconnections, 1450 – 1750 commences.
  • April 1, 2020: History Adventures, World of Characters, Empires & Interconnections, 1750 – 1900 updated version 1.1 goes live with 5 new fully interactive, animated, multimodal historical narrative chapters: https://books.apple.com/us/book/history-adventures-world-of-characters/id1505237819