The WTA pioneers character and technology education programs through service learning.  Students and volunteers gain work-based learning eperiences by providing valuable technology products and services to their school or local community.   Professional skills are gained while marketable products are produced to generate revenues that help sustain the program.  The Alliance typically partners with state education agencies, school districts, community organiziations and other formal or informal teaching institutions, to implement its programs.

Traditional education methods teach skills that students may someday use to benefit their lives. Our programs "reverse engineer" learning by first identifying technology products or services that students WILL produce that WILL benefit the student, their school, and/or their community. Students then embark on obtaining the skills necessary to produce these technology products and services. This makes learning relevant, highly motivating, and positions the school or community organization at the center of their community.  Successful students return to help teach the technology class.  Many obtain employment from organizations they provided technology work for.  Adult teachers take on the primary role of a facilitator to create and support self-sustaining student-run technology enterprises.

The programs work because the rate of change in technology makes professional competence less determined by what one knows and more determined by what one can learn. High school students are often able to learn technology skills faster than adults. Thus high school students have the capacity to outperform people with 50 years of experience in technology. Our programs harness this capacity and apply it to improving the student's lives, their schools, and their communities. This makes learning extremely relevant. Schools can keep up with rapid changes precipitated by technology by producing what they consume...teachers and money. If schools can produce more than they consume, they can accelerate!

The wilderness formed many of humankind's greatest virtues including trust, individual responsibility, teamwork, and diligence. All began as survival skills for our forefathers who interfaced directly with the wilderness. These skills eventually became values, which eventually became the archetypes of humanity.

Today most people, especially at-risk children, have little contact with the wilderness. Their friends and neighborhoods often teach them values, which are not always positive. All of our programs utilize wilderness-leadership expeditions to build the student/volunteer team that ultimately manage the student/volunteer-run enterprises.   We then apply these wilderness-derived skills to project-based learning in technology. The combination is amazing!