The Oregon Educational Technology Consortium (OETC) has signed an agreement with ESRI, the world leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, that will allow the OETC to promote, sell, duplicate, and disseminate ESRI software to K–12 school members. Members of the OETC will also have access to ESRI’s ArcView versions 3 and 8 for Windows and ArcView 3.0a for Macintosh.
The OETC is an incorporated, not-for-profit organization dedicated to maximizing the value of educational technology to its members by working with software and hardware vendors to procure the most effective and appropriate technological resources at the lowest possible price.
OETC membership comprises more than 500 educational institutions, school districts, and other educational nonprofit organizations.
In addition to all public and private K–12 schools in Oregon, the OETC’s membership includes a majority of schools in Idaho and Alaska as well as schools in Washington and Montana. Many higher education institutions are also members.
The contract comes shortly after Utah became the third U.S. state to implement GIS for use in all of its schools in August 2002. Montana announced a statewide instructional license in November 2000, followed by South Dakota in July 2002.
