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Duckwyn | Your Family’s Travel Guide To World History
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Duckwyn's Travel Blog

Latest news, information, and product updates on your favorite travel app

New Location: Royal Observatory

10/31/2018

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Today, the Royal Observatory was added to the Travel Passport. This fun location will take you through the history behind the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time. If you're there at 1pm, look for the red ball at the top of the observatory. It drops each day at this time, just as it has for hundreds of years. The ball drop allowed ships in port to synchronize their clocks before heading out to sea. 

The Royal Observatory is located high on a hill outside of London giving you a nice panoramic view of the city. Be sure to visit the downtown to check out the small shops and restaurants. If you're looking for quick day trip from London, Greenwich and the Royal Observatory are worth a trip.
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Finding Purpose Through My Kids, History and Travel

10/26/2018

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Recently, I started a new project. I’ve worked on many different ideas over the years but this one is different. For the first time in my life I’m working on a project that combines many of my passions (my kids, my family, love of design, coding, travel, history, and exploration). This project gives me purpose. Before I jump into it, I should give you a bit of the back story…

My family and I, like many families, enjoy traveling. Ever since the kids were babies, we’ve been taking them all over the United States. Now that they are older, we’ve expanded our trips to include Europe. We’ve been to England, France, and Italy. Soon we’ll spend some time in Spain.

One thing that I’ve noticed during our travels is how much our kids love to learn. Each new place presents new challenges, new cultures, sometimes, new languages. Further, each new place is rich in history. Thousands of years of history that have evolved and morphed each destination into what it is today.

When we travel, we make it a point to learn about the history of these places. We visit museums, churches, government buildings, parks, farms, memorials, and more. We explore. We walk. We ride. And, we read…a lot. Or, at least, we try to. Kids, at least our kids, don’t like to spend their days reading about history. They want to know what the importance of a location is — they want the highlights. They want to get straight to the interesting stories. And they don’t like to wait for their parents to read all the information before they are given the condensed version.
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My daughter likes to talk about a story she learned when we visited Salisbury Cathedral involving the poisoning of William Longespée. The mystery and how it was solved fascinated her.
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​How do we make the experience better for parents and kids?

As a developer, I thought it would be fun to develop an app that would give kids the information they needed to stay engaged. This app would help them to explore and learn about where they are and give them fun collectibles to use for sharing stories later.
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With the app, kids can track the countries and states that they visit. Further, there are historical sites that can be accessed in the app when you’re near them. So, if you’re in Washington DC and you walk past the White House, you can popup its history. When you’re done, you can click on a stamp button to add a White House stamp to the passport book in the app. Kids can read through historical summaries and answer trivia questions to show what they learned. If all the questions are answered correctly, then a special virtual gold coin is also added to their passport book.
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Now, kids can learn, answer trivia, and collect stamps and coins from the places they visit. Not only are they more engaged in what they are currently seeing, but they can use the app to find new places to explore later on.
The app is constantly growing. New locations are added every week and we recently added historical people to the collection.

The app is called Duckwyn. It was named after my son’s stuffed animal. My son and I like to make up fun stories at bedtime and Duckwyn is usually in the middle of the action. So when it came time to name the app, it was fitting that an app that is all about helping kids learn and understand history be named after our fun bedtime storyteller, Duckwyn.
Duckwyn is now in beta. You can sign up and start exploring today. Your kids will love tracking the places they visit and sharing their journey with their friends and family.

Since we’re in beta, I have a limited number of free accounts I’m giving out. If you’re interested, let me know, and I’ll send you the details to sign up.

To continue to follow the Duckwyn Project, you can find us at our blog, Twitter, Facebook, or on Instagram. Come by and share your travel stories. We’d love to hear them.

​Get your kids their own Travel Passport Books at http://app.duckwyn.com
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New Destinations Added in Segovia and Cuenca

10/17/2018

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There are 2 more locations to explore in Spain. We've added the Aqueduct of Segovia and the Hanging Houses in Cuenca. I'm planning to visit both of these in a few weeks. I'll be sure to take some pictures and share my experience when I return. This brings us up to 6 total destinations in Spain with a couple more coming soon.

​Get your Travel Passport today and start exploring.
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Find George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr, Benjamin Franklin, and more...

10/11/2018

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The list of people for you to find and collect continues to grow. Find these historical figures at the places where they grew up, lived, or changed the world.
  • George Washington
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Martin Luther King Jr
  • Rosa Parks
  • Paul Revere

Many more are coming soon.
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2 New Locations Added In Madrid, Spain

10/5/2018

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This week we added 2 locations in Madrid to our Kids Travel Passport book. We'll be continuing to expand in Spain with new locations in Barcelona, Cuenca, and Segovia coming soon. Starting this week, you can add the following to your collection:
  • Palacio Real de Madrid: Visit the official home of the Spanish Royal Family. Check out this massive 1.45 square foot palace, the largest royal palace in Europe.
  • Telefónica Building: The Telefónica Building was the tallest building in Madrid until 1953. Today, it's still a main attraction for it's history and design.

Visit and collect stamps from these locations in your Duckwyn Kids Travel Passport. If you don't have one yet, get yours today at our reduced price of $5 per year while we're in beta.
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Find and Collect Historical People!

10/4/2018

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We're starting to add historical people to our Travel Passport game. Now, you can find leaders, presidents, inventors, and more. The historical people will show up on your map the same way you find historical sites. Each person has a special card for you to add to your collection. Start exploring today and see which famous people you can find.
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    Chris Wills, founder and developer of the Duckwyn Travel Passport, a travel app for parents and kids to explore and document their travel adventures.

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