New App Reinvents Sightseeing Experiences for Children and Families

MINNEAPOLIS, July 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- As school lets out for summer, families are beginning to plan summer day trips and travel. A recent survey reveals an increase in family travel this summer with "86 percent of respondents planning a leisure trip" and more and more parents seeking an educational experience for their families.^[1]

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Today with smartphones and tablets, there are hundreds of distractions at kids' fingertips, making it increasingly difficult to keep them engaged in educational environments. Parents are spending big bucks to expose their families to the world's top cultural and historical sites only to find their kids disengaged and bored.

Help is on the way this summer with the launch of History Hero – the first app to use an interactive video game to teach history to children and teenagers as they tour some of the world's top historical sites.  Developed in consultation with some of the nation's top teachers, History Hero brings history to life in a way that guidebooks and audio tours cannot.  Kids of all ages – and their parents – take on interactive missions from the International Committee on Extraterrestrial Threats (ICE-T) to save the world. History Hero engages children during their travels, injecting excitement into sightseeing by means of an entertaining and educational battle between the History Heroes and the evil Erasers.

Who are the Erasers? The Erasers are evil aliens who have figured out that we are weaker as a planet without a collective history to bind us together.  Their plan is to destroy all evidence of our history to diminish our will to defend Earth against their attempts to take over the planet. It is up to our kids to protect our history from annihilation by joining the History Hero team and recording data about key artifacts on a "secure hard drive" as they visit museums, churches and other historical sites.

Reporting to Duty
History Hero recruits children age 4 and up to report to duty at 23 of the world's top historical sites in the U.S and Europe. History Hero missions are designed for three age groups – ages 4-7 (with an adult companion), 8-12 and 13 and above. The missions for older players have more artifacts to rescue and offer increasingly sophisticated educational content about each artifact.  After taking the History Hero oath, recruits are sent on a mission to find and save the location's top artifacts from The Erasers. Upon finding an artifact, recruits are asked multiple choice questions about the artifact and encouraged to take a photo (if allowed) to preserve the artifact for history.

Once the artifact is documented, History Hero provides the recruit with an age-appropriate description of the artifact, developed with the help of teachers, in the form of data to be downloaded to a "secure hard drive" and the opportunity to answer a bonus question based on this data.  As the recruits learn more about Earth's history, they are rewarded with points. Upon successful completion of the mission, the recruit and their History Hero receive ICE-T's highest decoration – the Medal of Honor.

Encouraging Learning While Traveling
Mind Gamez, the creator of History Hero, knows parents see travel as part of holistic learning. According to a recent survey, "as many as 97 percent of respondents said they consider travel important for their children's education."^[2]

Mitch Zamoff, a lawyer, law school teacher and father of three from Minnesota, came up with the idea for History Hero when he was traveling in Europe with his family.  He wanted to make family trips to historical destinations more engaging, interactive and memorable while still encouraging learning.

"While visiting Europe with my family last year, I was struck by the number of sad children and disengaged teenagers at the most amazing historical venues in the world," said Zamoff. "Kids and their families desperately need a tool to make these visits interactive and relevant for young people.  These should be memorable adventures, not tedious chores, for our kids."

Working with a board of the nation's top teachers, Zamoff and his team at Mind Gamez LLC created History Hero, the first app of its kind, designed to inspire learning through travel in a fun and interactive way. Geared towards today's digital generation, History Hero will enhance family visits to some of the world's greatest historical and cultural destinations by engaging kids in a surprising and unique way.

Additional Intelligences
History Hero is designed for Apple^®[3] operating systems, and is available for download in the Apple App Store at http://bit.ly/HHeroApp.  Each mission is available for in-app download for $4.99.  The Android version of History Hero will be available later this summer. History Hero is the first app developed by Mind Gamez LLC, an app developer on a mission to bring history to life for children and their families during their family travel and sightseeing experiences. Mind Gamez interactive video games are developed in close consultation with some of the nation's best teachers. Mind Gamez apps are fun, but also designed to encourage learning among children and teenagers while they are visiting the world's most well-known museums and historical sites.

History Hero is currently available at the following cultural and historical destinations; Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art and the Natural History Museum in New York; Air & Space Museum, Museum of American History, National Gallery of Art and the Natural History Museum in Washington DC; Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis; British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern and the Tower of London in London; Fontainebleau, Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur and Versailles in Paris; Colosseum, Pantheon, Roman Forum, St. Peter's Basilica and Vatican in Rome.  Additional sites in these cities as well as sites in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco will be available later this summer.

ABOUT MIND GAMEZ LLC
Mind Gamez LLC formed in 2012 with a mission to bring history to life for children and their families during their travel and sightseeing experiences. They develop quality interactive gaming applications designed in close consultation with some of the nation's best teachers to ensure an educational sightseeing adventure. Its first app, History Hero, was launched in June 2013.

CONTACT:
Dan Schacter
+1 312 729 6476
[email protected]

Related Link:
Download History Hero 

[1] TripAdvisor, 2013. Please see: http://www.tripadvisor.com/PressCenter-i5985-c1-Press_Releases.html

[2] TripAdvisor, 2013. Please see: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/travel-plays-key-role-in-childrens-education-survey/1101518/1

[3] Apple is a trademark of Apple, Inc. Please see: https://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/guidelinesfor3rdparties.html

SOURCE Mind Gamez LLC