While You Work Sometimes, you desperately need to get the participants' attention in the middle of an activity. Usually the participants are so busy talking to each other, solving problems, making decisions, or working out strategies that they totally ignore you. You need to announce important rules or procedures and you are worried that people will miss your announcement and blame you later. This is a problem for all facilitators. In situations like this, you have to be assertive.
Total darkness gets everyone's attention.
Then you turn the lights back on and make your announcement. This strategy works with hearing participants also. Obviously, it will not work if daylight streams in through the windows. They work effectively, but some of them irritate the participants. And some attract all the dogs and police officers in the neighborhood.