Teach yourself GIS for FREE

Do you want to get involved in GIS, but can not afford to attend the very expensive degree, diploma or corporate software training programs? You can use the massive amount of free information on the internet to kick start your training for FREE.

I would definitely recommend any aspired GIS professionals to try and obtain a formal GIS qualification via the various degree, diploma, certificate programs in the long run, but you can learn quit a bit from the free online resources without spending large amounts of money.

I spent a hour or so searching the internet for free GIS related resources and came up with the following:

Introduction to GIS
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/maps/gis/tutorials.html


ESRI Software This is the most widely used GIS software in SA and the world. The software is very expensive, but you can download a two month trial for free. It will be very good to have some exposure to this software though. They have free as well as paid for training courses.

• Training - http://training.esri.com/gateway/index.cfm?fa=search.results&cannedsearch=2
• Software trail - http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgis-for-desktop/free-trial
• Support - http://support.esri.com/en/
• Forum - http://forums.arcgis.com/

QGIS Software
This is free & opensourse software, so you can download and use it for training or professional work.

• Software - http://www.qgis.co.za/en/site/
• Training - http://www.qgis.co.za/en/docs/index.html

Do an internet search for "opensource GIS software" and you will find many more options.

Learn GIS for free
Here are two links that could assist in finding free GIS courses:

• http://www.gislounge.com/learn-gis-for-free/
• http://freegiscenter.blogspot.com/2010/05/free-gis-tutorials-exercises.html

Data
Here you can find free data to use whilst training/learning or even for professional commercial work:

• Collect at your nearest NGI office - http://www.ngi.gov.za/
• Free online data - http://www.geocomm.com/

Apart from the few links I posted here, there is a large amount of free resources available on the internet and there is no reason why you should not be able to teach you quite a bit about the subject/software/data without having to pay for anything.

Good luck!