GIS products are available from a variety of sources, but ESRI is the standard for education.

There are different classes of ESRI products available differentiated by the robustness of their functionality, system requirements, and price.

Standalone Products. ESRI offers three levels of standalone systems each sometimes referred to as ArcGIS Desktop. Each may be enhanced by the addition of extensions and each differs in cost and level of functionality, shown from highest to lowest:

1. ArcInfo® (professional product)
2. ArcEditor TM
3. ArcView

Each ArcGIS Desktop product consists of two applications:

1. ArcMap - to view, analyze and print maps
2. ArcCatalog - to view GIS data which accompanies each map.

For school use, ESRI offers ArcView at attractive pricing* and it is the standalone product referred to in the remainder of this report.

1. ArcGIS 9 (ArcGIS Version 2 has recently been released and requires a reinstall from ArcGIS 9.1)
2. ArcGIS 3, the previous version which was extensively used in education

ArcView 3 has a limited demonstration version known as ArcVoyager. It is simplified for academic use with all its database tables, projection, points, lines, and areas coordinated to a specific map and combined into a project. Note: Older texts whose projects were prepared for ArcVoyager cannot be directly opened in ArcGIS 9.

Summary

While these two versions of ArcView are currently available for purchase at the same price, as they do not read the same data format and the older version does not support newly developed personal database formats, ArcGIS 9 would be my recommendation for a standalone product. Also newer texts and training are based upon ArcGIS 9.

Purchasing and Free Trials

Secondary schools may purchase a site license for ArcGIS 9 for $500. Alternatively, a free one-year trial is available on CDs included with several ESRI publications, namely Mapping Our World and XXX.

What's Included

Arc Explorer and ArcExplorer Java for Education

Google Earth and Google Maps

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This page was last modified 1/22/07 .  Comments and suggestions to: karolyne@empoweringtech.net