Proper scrabble, piracy, sausage rolls, storytelling, hats and lolly sticks.

Last night I attended the latest TeachMeet North East.

The venue was the Tyneside Cinema, in Newcastle.

Once again it was thanks to Chris Harte (and his team) who put in a huge amount of effort organising and securing sponsorship so that the whole thing could take place.

Around fifty education professionals attended and were treated to some free wine, excellent sandwiches and some truly amazing presentations (and me doing a shortened version of the "lolly sticks" thing from MFLSAT)

All of the presenters were very good, but for me the highlights of the evening were:

• Peter Dine's retelling of a recent Ofsted experience
• Charlotte Bailey and David Gray's inside outside circles
• Simon Finch's "sex and drugs and sausage rolls" (a serious learning conversation about e-safety and naked hindu dancers)
• Amy Dickinson's use of De Bono's thinking hats in peer assessment (De Bono once claimed the solution to the Arab-Isaeli conflict was Marmite)
• Darren Mead and Fergus Hegarty's metacognitive wrappers and proper piratical scrabble
• Steve Bunce's twelve digital storytelling tools (including the Wagneriser)

You can find other accounts of the evening on Darren Mead's blog and Mark Clarkson's blog (and here) and Simon Finch has kindly published photos of the evening here.

It was a fantastic evening. I caught up with some old friends, met some new ones, and took away some excellent ideas which I can try out in my own teaching.

Huge thanks again to everyone involved - I loved it.