I was invited to visit Brightworks in San Francisco by my friend and Founder, Gever Tulley.

Back in 2005 he founded Tinkering School, a summer school for children based on the belief that they can build anything, and through building, learn anything. He’s written a book, 50 Dangerous Things (you should let your children do) and presented at TED a couple of times. And now he’s got his own extraordinary school.

The children were exploring a theme called “By Hand” and part of this was to see what it was like if you didn’t have a hand or perhaps what it was like if you had four. The children (of all ages 6-12) were incredibly creative, taping up body parts, adding articulating limbs to different parts of their body, seeing what it was like without a hand or just a few fingers.

I got a chance to come in and talk about my experiences and show them how I had adapted and used my different prosthetics for different situations. They got to see my high-tech, bionic hand as well as my low tech body powered hook.

It was great fun and they all made a card thanking me for coming in to visit.

Brightworks blew my mind, it was so unlike any school I remember from my childhood and all the children were so engaged and happy. Makes me wish I was a kid again!