A look at free GIS software

In preparation for teaching Earth Science 30 next January, I started looking at GIS in education.  I started with a link from DLSE.  This activity used an ancient piece of software called Arc Voyager which doesn't let you save anything.  I then tried Arc GIS Explorer.  I was trying to find some data and found this page with free Saskatchewan data.  I signed up so I could download Saskatoon elevation data from GeoBase.  I was looking at some of the info that came with the zip file and read it was raster data.  So, I added this to Arc GIS Explorer and got this:

Not sure what use this is.  I am now going to try Falcon View which was a 200 Mbyte download.

Well, I installed Falcon View, but I had to browse to the install folder to see where the app was.  Ran the app and it didn't do anything. Well, not a good start for this open source product!  Since it makes a folder called Xplan, I went to the start menu and tried to run the shortcut from the start menu (Xplan folder).  I saw that the error on the splash screen was initialisation failed.  Hmmmm.

Earlier today, I took the PDF of Elbow basement topography and saved it as a JPG.  I then imported this JPG into LoggerPro for photo analysis.  Unfortunately, I couldn't zoom in on the photo.  I was trying to do a profile on the map and get the x data (distance along the profile).  Later on, I was going to add the elevation data manually.  No luck since I can't zoom in on the image!  I was thinking of using Adobe Illustrator (or maybe Inkscape), but I haven't tried that yet.