Firenze!
Published 10/11/16
The town of the infamous Medici family, world renowned Uffizi Art Gallery and Nazi-defying Ponte Vecchio. Although the beginning of our trip was not perfect, thanks to the well-timed Italian air-strike - our baggage was hostage in Pisa for about 7 hours. Our first day ended with the ultimate reunion of our bags along with the sainthood of Miss Cresswell; who had fought long and hard for our precious belongings! Our next three days was packed full with excursions including church crawls, intense Italian lessons, museum visits and many, many gelato breaks. An all-round favourite was the Gucci Museum which contained fabulous shoes, dresses and of course, refreshments in our main rendez-vous on the Piazza della Signoria. The Basilica di Santa-Croce amazed each and every one of us as we went from tomb to tomb gazing upon the final resting places of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Rossini and many more impressive names.
The Mock Trial trip to a Costa Coffee branch not only provided students with delicious frappe lattes, but also gave us the opportunity to investigate how the law applies in a real life situation, in a stimulating and interactive way. Before our trip, we had considered the famous Liebeck vs. McDonald's Restaurants product liability law case (also known as the ‘hot coffee lawsuit’), in which an elderly woman was awarded $2.86 million after suffering third-degree burns as a result of accidentally spilling a cup of McDonald’s coffee in her lap. This thought-provoking case about the issues of negligence under tort law gave inspiration to our challenge to identify any examples of Costa’s compliance with its legal obligations that were evident within its premises.
Lower 6 IB students visited the Arch and Anth Museum in Cambridge on Tuesday this week in order to find a Theory of Knowledge related question to follow up back at school. There were some fascinating artefacts in the archaeology and anthropology sections of the museum, the most eye catching was the gigantic totem pole that towered over the whole exhibition. The collection included items collected from people all over the world, from many different periods of history. We saw a lot of intricate jewellery, coins, clothes, tools, religious items, toys and practical items. This was my second visit to the museum, I enjoyed it just as much as last time, but by thinking critically about objects and trying to think of Knowledge questions related to objects, exhibitions or the museum as a whole, I got so much more out of it. We came up with some really interesting questions which we discussed back at school the following morning.