Samvinas Help For facilitators

Raise Hand — for facilitators

Raise Hand is a utility that gives the room a fair queue: participants tap ✋, and you see who's waiting, in order, in the footer of your view. It replaces the loudest-voice-wins dynamic with a visible, first-come queue — and it works across whatever tool the group is currently using.

Samvinas

  • Enable Raise Hand in the Utilities section of your session view.
  • Participants tap the ✋ in their footer to join the queue (and tap again to leave it).
  • Your footer shows the queue in order. Next clears the current speaker and moves on; Clear All empties the queue at a scene change.

Raise Hand sits outside the flow — no items in, none out; it just manages the speaking order over whatever the group is doing.

Paper and pen

You need: a corner of the flip chart (or whiteboard) the room can see, and a marker within your reach.

  • Announce the rule once: "raise your hand — I'll add you to the list and take people in order."
  • Write names in the corner as hands go up. The visible list is what makes the queue trusted — people put their hands down once their name is on it.
  • Cross names off as they speak; wipe the list clean between activities.
  • Failure mode to avoid: running the queue from memory. The first time you skip someone, hands stop going up and shouting resumes.

When & why

Reach for a queue when contributions come through the air rather than through the tools — Q&A, report-backs, plenary discussion — especially in large rooms or online, where the loudest voice otherwise wins.

  • Say how you'll use it, once: "if you want to speak, raise your hand in the app — I'll take people in order."
  • Watch for hands that have waited long: a queue is only fair if it actually gets served.
  • Clear the queue between activities so stale hands don't carry over.
  • If the same few names keep filling the list, Brain Writing or Breakout Groups spread participation further than any queue can.

Editing this page? It lives at content/facilitator/raise-hand.md.