Do you have a fire alarm? I mean, you have to, right? Well, if you have, then you know what it does when the battery hits a certain low point in its charge. I’m not sure what that level is or how the fire alarm “knows” to do this, but once it gets there…..beep……beep……beep…..beep.
Actually ours chirps. Its intermittent though on some sort of a timer. I think maybe its once every 30 seconds, maybe 45 seconds. But once it starts, it does not quit till you climb up on a ladder and change that battery (well, or remove the old battery).
Chirp.
Chirp.
Never lets up…..chirp.
It is designed to get you to move to action, no matter how tired you may, no matter how much you think its your spouse’s job to do this, no matter how you might not have a new 9 volt battery. Chirp.
I think we need this in our lives. We need one for lots of things. To drink more water. To pay your bills on time. To put on your seat belt. Actually, on that last one as you probably know, some newer cars have the same incessant beep formula. Heck, our Toyota will start to beep and complain if you put too many groceries into the passenger seat. I’ve literally had to reach over and buckle the passenger seat in order to get the car to stop beeping at me.
Chirp.
It works. That’s the thing. You know, at least at some level, this is trying to help me out. It is trying to warn me about some action I should take that, if I fail to take, will probably me bad for me. Don’t have a strong battery in the fire/smoke alarm and it does you no good.
Where I really wish I had one is for my students. I had a mini-popular Facebook post a few weeks back when I complained about some of my students (roughly 50%) and their failure to act in their own best interest when it comes to doing their work. I had just finished grading a major unit assessment and had several either simply fail to do it, or fail to do all of it (I am assuming those students just sort of ran out of time and had to turn in substandard work). Maybe if they had a beeping mechanism that started, maybe 48 hours, to just randomly go off, maybe once every 2-3 minutes, until such time as the work was fully complete, more students would do the work.
Chirp.
See, I don’t think they fail to act in defiance or because they hate themselves and wish to ruin their dreams. No…I think its far more simple than that. They just focus on other things, some big like work and some small like social media. Meanwhile, the time slips by until such time as it gets really close. Then, with some fear and trepidation, they look at the assignment and realize “holy crap…this really is College and this is a massive undertaking that will probably take me 5-8 hours to complete.” And then they hit the fetal position, maybe grab an unhelpful drink and then just turn the TV back on.
I bet they wouldn’t do that if a nasty, persistent, high pitched chirp started coming out of their phone that simply could not be turned off until they actually submitted the required work.
Well, I don’t know if I can get Blackboard or Canvas to code that into the system, but you can set up something like it to help yourself. First, put all of your graded, required work, into your calendar or “To do” app. Then, set up the reminders. Set up more than one if you know you have a history of blowing off necessary work. Put them in random places. Consider bringing in another person to play the role of the “beeping device” and have them text you. Or go even more public by asking a few people to hit you up wherever you hang out in social media. Put some public posts up there about what the work is and when its due. And, no, don’t put up some complaining post whining. Just a post that you have X to do in Y days and you want people to ask you about it.
If that doesn’t work, you could always put a bad battery into your alarm and leave it there until such time as you complete the work. Chirp.