#pelc12 PELeCON

Pelecon 2012 has come to an end and I have had such an amazing experience as a student volunteer! I think I've heard some of best speakers of my entire first year at the university, that have definitely inspired and interested me. Stories of the great work they are doing within education from @deputymitchell @theheadsoffice @courosa @stevebunce @heloukee @mberry @gravesle, just to name a few of the people I have managed to see whilst helping out.

The evening of the first day became #tmpelecon, a teach meet in the students union with some fantastic speakers sharing experiences and ideas. The main challenge of the night, well for me at least, came later. Despite being fairly comfortable at the front of the classroom teaching, the thought of speaking in front of an audience of professionals and students terrifies me. So I quickly hid my head when the presentations were finished and @terryfreedman asked if any student teacher bloggers would share their thoughts on the benefits of it.

Even though I vaguely heard someone say my name behind me I just pretended to write something down in my notebook! So my lecturer, Pete - @ethinking, decided to volunteer me much to my surprise. About five minutes later, and from lots of lovely encouragement from a fellow BEd student @amyparkinbed, I was up at the front talking about my recent experiences of blogging.

Sitting back down I realised that I probably hadn't made a lot of sense in what I was saying, and had spoken too quickly but I had definitely challenged myself to overcome a fear. What helped more was the really kind encouragement I received after the teach meet, on twitter and over the next two days as it really helped me with my confidence levels if I'm to do anything similar again. Over the three days of pelecon the word 'failures' has come up a lot and the way we can learn from these, in the confession booth too (http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuaMu_dOzp-BS6H1j4Z6iXw). It's amazing to see how I've learnt already from the help of others persuading me to face my fears and talk and in pushing myself to get up there!

Alec Couros's (@courosa) talk the next day said that putting things out there before they are perfect is an important part of learning. This put into perspective for me that my skill to speak in public didn't need to be perfected before I did it, but I just needed to put myself out there to practice and learn from the experience. (And maybe from that people learnt or had an incite into student teacher blogging too)

There is so much else to talk about regarding #pelc12 but for now I'll leave it on my perspective of the event and how I learnt and began to overcome a fear.

@HannahSheltonTT