[Qgis-user] What is the matter with QGis versus MS Windows?

[Daniel Freeman]

Good Evening Qgis Users,

I have been following this list-serve for the last 6-8 months and I just want to say thank you to all of the developers and others who have contributed to this  wonderful piece of software.  I am not a GIS professional by trade, but do have a Certificate in GIS Science after completing a 24 hr semester course  of studies in the field.  My field expertise is education and instructional technology having been a university instructor, science teacher and science supervisor in a school district with > 40,000 students.  I currently work for the federal govt as a web-based/distant learning instructional designer in the medical field.

I am currently developing a series of gis lessons/information using QGIS as the main software for the instruction for the K-12 environment.  Having been in the K-16 environment, I know schools are constantly looking for ways to save money and provide appropriate technological experiences for their students.  Although the leading GIS software company has a very extensive K-12 education initiative, their main focus is to sell products and to help the professional GIS community.  I see open source software, be it Office, imaging software, QGIS or NIH Image J (did my doctoral work with the predecessor of this software), as major players in the education field.  With open source software teachers can modify the application and provide appropriate homework assignments to their students (for the students can also install the software on their own computers), something that won't happen with commercial software unless the software is practically given away.

Although I too have used MapWindows and think it is a very good piece of software, but the K-12 environment uses both Windows PCs and Macs and with the Intel Mac thus my focus being QGIS.

Once again my hats off to all of the fine people who have developed, and continue to support this fine product.

Thank you.

Daniel