Postcrossing Blog

A while ago, we got an email from Chang Chia-Yen (aka Geoian), in Taiwan. He’s a teacher in a secondary school there, and has been using Postcrossing with his classes… with a twist!

For a while, Geoian and his students collected postcard from all over the world, until they received a nice variety of them. Then, they shuffled all the cards together, divided the class into 2 teams and got ready for a mighty game of bingo!

The goal of Geoian’s class bingo is to be the first to make a straight line of 5 items (in this case, postcards), either diagonal, vertical or horizontally across the board, and eventually to complete it. At the start, each team fills up their lattice with postcards they pick, distributed randomly.

Then, conditions are laid out — these are special criteria such as “a multiview card”, “a card from a World Heritage site” or “a card featuring an aurora borealis”. Some are quite specific, while others are broad ranging and might be able to accommodate several different postcards.

They randomly choose the criteria for each turn, list them all on their blackboard, and then the game can start! In each turn, teams choose one postcard that matches the condition at play, and can thus be removed from the board. (Teams can also play some wildcards that change the conditions to better suit their needs… but we won’t go into so much detail). Whoever removes all the postcards from a straight line, makes a bingo!

It seems tricky, and I confess we had a little trouble understanding the concept initially… so the students got together on their own initiative and made a really nice video to show us the game in action! We found it really endearing and were infected by their enthusiasm — so we decided to share it with you all! Here it is:

It’s very nice to see this whole new dimension to exploring postcards — and also to know that the fun doesn’t stop after a card his registered! 😊 A huge thank you to Geoian for coming up with the game, and to all his students who took the time to make this video on own their free time to help us understand their bingo game. They are Angelina and Cathy (the hosts), Jenny and Nini (the videographers), and Linda, Mina, Frank, Duke, Jacob, Gino, Doris and Alex (the players) — thank you guys!

PS – If you’re a teacher or a parent, why not give it a go? Categories can be as convoluted or simple as you’d like, adapting the difficulty level to each children’s skills. Let us know how it goes!

Some time ago, we received a nice email from Peter (aka p22earl), asking whether we’d be interested in knowing how he had been using Postcrossing to learn about music from all over the world from other postcrossers. Well, we love music and we love fun projects that members run using the site… so yes, please! :)

Here he is, explaining his postal/musical experiment:

I came across Postcrossing by chance at home one evening. I was reading about Bookcrossing which I have done a bit of in the past when I stumbled upon Postcrossing. As a lover of snail mail I was instantly hooked on the idea and signed up to begin sending postcards.

I read some other users accounts and got a sense of how to set out my own ‘who i am and what i want’ profile. I thought about the kinds of postcards I’d like to receive and additionally I considered what I would like to perhaps learn from fellow Postcrossers. I have quite a lot of music on CD and cassette tapes. I don’t collect vinyl. My radio is hardly ever off. I decided that I really wanted to learn more about music from other parts of the world and that Postcrossing would be a good way to help me learn about it.

My profile reads… ‘I like to learn about different types of music from all over the world. Please tell me about your favourite music from your home country / city / town.’ And on postcards I sent out across the skies I wrote words to a similar affect. Often I would tell people what I was listening to that day or about my favourite bands (Breed 77, Beach House Joanna Gruesome, etcetera…).

The responses I had from Postcrossers did not disappoint. There were those who wrote about musical instruments they play, or what genre of music they enjoy. One from Netherlands wrote about how they could hear children going from door to door singing songs and collecting candy as part of traditional Saint Martin’s Day celebrations (11 November). And I started to learn as I had hoped about lots of genres of music I had never heard of (or considered) such as Medieval Rock (Saltatio Mortis), Mandopop (JJ Lin), Slovakian punk (Horkýže Slíže), Daina Baltic Folk (Alina Orlova), Russian Folk (Пелагея).

And as time went on I started to think about what I would do with my new found knowledge. Eventually I decided that I would make a mixtape of various Postcrossers’ favourites. Once I reached 100 postcards I selected one from each postcrosser who wrote to me or replied about music. I chose to not include bands whose music is familiar to me such as Abba or the Bee Gees – not just because I don’t like them but my aim with the project was to discover music that was new to me. And importantly I wanted that music to be an international portrait of Postcrossing members’ diverse tastes.

And as I used to do so much in my teens, I taped the music onto cassette. This is the only physical copy of the postcrossing playlist. I painted it with a small (inaccurate) map of the world on one side and on the reverse is a postcard including a real stamp. The mixtape exists as two playlists on Spotify. One side (playlist 1) featuring music from postcards I received and the second side (playlist 2) featuring songs from replies to postcards I sent. Side 1 plays 47 minutes, and side 2 runs for 43 minutes.

You can find the Postcrossing playlists on Spotify by searching ‘Postcrossing Mixtape’. My Spotify username is p22earl.

I hope you enjoy learning about some new music from around the world too. Let me know your favourite song from the playlist. And if you send me a postcard make sure to tell me about the music from your home country / city / town.

Happy Postcrossing

Peace, post & music

Peter

PS – Since not everyone has access to Spotify, here’s the track listing for Peter’s mixtape:

Side 1:

Side 2:

PPS – Notice something inside Peter’s mailbox on the first picture? Here’s a better photo:

Yup! Peter has little people who live inside his mailbox and take care of all the mail! He says he put them there to surprise his wife for her birthday, and they ended up staying… How nice is that? 😀

Ever found yourself looking at a postcard and thinking how life must be in that place? Or ever got curious about a country or a city and went online to find more about it? We know we do. Postcards allows us to travel to different places even without leaving our home.

Sandy (Shaneez) lives in South Africa and she decided to take traveling through postcards to a new level: go around the world in 80 days, through her postcards. The result of it is interesting blog very appropriately called Sandy, the Armchair Traveller.

In it, Sandy takes us through an imaginary trip around the world visiting the places where she has postcards from! All the stops include tons of details about them: photos, videos, links, curiosities, even local cuisine. But most importantly, plenty of imagination. And there’s even a map of the trip!

If you enjoy traveling through postcards, then make sure to stop by at Sandy, the Armchair Traveller.

Bon voyage!