Tag: Mirka Mora

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The tweet that led to Mirka Mora: Part two.

Last week I wrote about sending out a tweet on twitter asking if anyone had a connection to Mirka Mora, as my daughter and her friends were doing a project about her and would love to get the opportunity to interview her. After some help from Lauren O’Grady,  Gina Milicia very kindly responded and set the wheels in motion. Mirka was happy to be interviewed, and my daughter and her friends conducted a phone interview that was recorded and posted to YouTube and on the wikispace they had created for the project.  At the end of the interview Mirka remarked to me that she was impressed with their astute questions and would like to invite them to afternoon tea.

Well, that very kind invitation was taken up this afternoon. My daughter and her friends, and a colleague and I, spent a very pleasant hour and a half visiting Mirka’s home sharing cheesecake and lemon tea.

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Mirka welcomed us with a loud chorus of classical music and a warm smile. She is such a  generous soul, full of wisdom that she imparted to us over the course of our visit. One of the first things she said was that we should always praise ourselves; in other words, exhibit self belief. The stories she shared demonstrated her ability to take risks and do things that she was not always confident about. This self belief led to great success and opportunities for Mirka. She was friendly with some of the great Australian painters and recounted stories about her great friend Marcel Marceau.

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Mirka’s home is full of memorabilia and artwork. In  her studio she had three art works on the go and she said this is how she paints. She likes to move to where she feels best able to extend her creativity.  It was such a privilege  for all of us to be invited to her private space and be able to see what Mirka is all about. And what is she about? Life, and living it to the full, pure and simple.

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Mirka and her pet snail! Her beloved cat died two years ago.

Mirka shared a story that epitomised what she is about. Her doctor told her a few years ago that she should have a walking frame when out and about. Mirka would have none of that. Instead, she invested in prams and now has 16 or so that she uses when out shopping. One day she was out and saw a woman with four children, one of whom was very young and struggling to keep up. The mother looked harried. Mirka approached her and gave her the pram she was using. She told us how they shared a moment together; they were united in the shared experience of motherhood.  When telling us this Mirka’s eyes were teary and I have to admit, mine were too. 

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This has been a wonderful learning experience for our students (and my daughter!)  I think it safe to say that Mirka found it equally powerful. I think she was genuinely impressed with the students’ questions and with the fact that she is having an impact on our younger generation. It’s an example of Network Literacy; teachers using social media tools to connect our students to the subject of their research. I know that these students will never forget Mirka Mora and they know what led us to her. As we walked away today from from Mirka’s home one of them said,  “That’s it. I’m never dissing Twitter again.”

A great experience for all. Thank you so much Mirka for your graciousness in allowing us into your home and for sharing your life with us. We are all the richer for it.

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The tweet that led to Mirka Mora.

On Tuesday evening I put out a tweet on Twitter asking if anyone had a connection to Mirka Mora. My daughter was doing a project based on her life and she would have loved to get the opportunity to interview her. Lauren O’Grady saw my tweet and retweeted it to her network . Lauren has extended her network beyond education and it didn’t take long for a response to come my way. Gina Milicia is a professional photographer who knows Mirka and she let me know that she would talk to her and be in touch.

Wednesday morning Gina rang me to tell me she had spoken to Mirka and she would be happy to speak to my daughter and the other girls who are completing the project with her.  Both of us marvelled at the power of the Twitter network to facilitate something like this. We  both agreed that there is something special about the people there; a willingness to help one another out. It’s a bit like my neighbourhood when I was growing up; people would pitch in to support one another. Twitter feels like that to me.

I rang Mirka and set things up for an afternoon phone call interview. The girls were thrilled. They never expected that they would be actually talking to the subject of their research. We decided we would use the loudspeaker function of my phone and a voice tracer device that would record the call and enable it to be downloaded as an MP3 file. I’d informed Mirka of this and she was happy to have this happen.

1.30pm came around and the interview took place. All of the girls asked questions and managed to draw out answers that related to their theme of triumph over adversity. Mirka is a very interesting and generous person. She’s an artist who migrated to Australia as a young bride from France after the Second World War. She is Jewish and related to the girls her experiences avoiding internment in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

When the girls had finished with their questions I got back on the phone to thank Mirka. She relayed to me how honoured she was to have them use her as the focus of their project and remarked on how they had asked very astute questions. She then said she would like to invite them to afternoon tea at her place as a way of thanking them! We set a date and the girls will be visiting Mirka next week.

How’s that! Pretty amazing really. A tweet goes out, it gets a response, and our students find themselves having the opportunity to meet with the person they have chosen as their object of study for their inquiry week project. We are fortunate that Mirka is such a generous soul.

I have to say I’ve been impressed with my daughter’s skills over the last couple of days. Her group set up a wiki for the project. They wanted to embed the MP3 file of the phone conversation. We were trying to figure out how to get it uploaded to the wiki when she came up with the idea of uploading to YouTube. She tried that but the file wouldn’t process. She then made a Photo Story and used the file as the audio track. This successfully uploaded to YouTube and she was able to embed it in the wiki. Here it is;

She must be learning a thing or two from her Mum! She’ll be teaching me soon at this rate.

If you’d like to, take a look at their wiki . They’d be thrilled to see some dots on their Clustrmap.