Windows to the World​

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For Geography enthusiasts across the nation, today is the best day of the year! As we celebrate GIS Day, let's take a look at one way in which art has been used to celebrate place throughout recent history: Postcards.

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Postcards are great primary sources that provide opportunities to study places and how places change over time. Postcards are a type of primary source that document the natural environment (bodies of water and landforms), as well as the “built” environment such as roads, buildings, homes, gardens. Cemeteries, and parks. Daily life is also documented in postcards such as work locations, types of transportation, religion, entertainment, recreation, and tourist sites.

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So how can postcards be applied for inquiry with students? For one, picture postcards often display activities which today are puzzling. An old postcard shows a man and a horse performing what seems to be some type of work on the edge of a field. Amid piles of “sticks” a man stands behind two barrels, with a stickpoking into a bit of machinery linked to a wooden boom which in turn is hitched to the house. Students would explicate these bits of information from the postcard, but also be expected to put this data together to solve the mystery of what is being produced. If they are stumped, the teacher might raise questions to stimulate further lines of inquiry.

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The picture postcard also permits teachers and their students to do a locality study, focused upon the physical and cultural relationships within a place and upon changes over time. People interact with the natural setting. They adapt to the setting and they, of course, modify that setting. The human modifications of the natural landscapes reveal their cultural values, beliefs, wealth, and level of technology, among other things. It is less obvious how people adapt themselves, their cultural beliefs, and values to the natural landscape. Using historical picture postcards in a locality study, students can more readily see these changes and their consequences.

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Finally, the geography teacher at any grade level can implement postcards as a tool in the classroom. Teachers might develop a “Classroom Picture-Postcard Album,” using a bulletin board. Throughout the year, students and teachers might share picture postcards(with personal messages deleted) by adding them to the bulletin board. Students can work to categorize the “album” as the number of cards increases. 

 

An artform in and of itself, the picture postcard has great potential to serve as a catalyst to enhance students’ motivation to learn about other places.​