“Lofty Estimates” is an example of a project-based lesson from the Salvadori Center, salvadori.org .
Kubi, an architect-educator, teaches middle school students how to use a giant protractor in the field, demonstrating how trigonometry helps surveyors determine the height of a building that is far away. The students help each other to use a tape measure and a trig table that they call “that tangent thing”, to make their calculations.

From 1992-2006, we worked closely with Mario Salvadori and the Salvadori Center. The Center is dedicated to teaching math and science through the built environment to inner city and at-risk kids, from kindergarten through high school. We created many video programs for them using our documentary approach to teaching their method: we depct the archtect and engineer-edustors in actio in the classroom and in the field with kids of all ages. More examples of the video curriculum work we did for them can be found at: http://www.salvadori.org/kids
The purpose of these shorts was to help teachers to see how easy it is to implement these lessons, and to demonstrate how actively engaged their students were.