Upholding Open Source Principles for Education: Use of Quantum GIS for Teaching Geoinformatics

Requirements that students have to face up nowadays are tight enough to achieve a goal of the high level in IT and GIS skills, ability to work quickly and easily with any kind of information including geospatial data. Needless to say that modern system of education at universities in general and faculties of geography in particular should be prepared to answer the requests of time and society and to involve as many possible GIS teaching as possible. Recently, more and more IT courses including GIS is being taught at schools and universities. Using GIS becomes one of the most sought-after skills. Their use in the classrooms by students of geography departments is therefore essential and required. Nevertheless, the high commercial price of the software often becomes a serious problem. The aim of this short paper is to briefly demonstrate possibilities of the easy-to-use yet effective and multifunctional open source Quantum GIS which is effective and excellent replacement of the traditional expensive priority software.