FOSS4G in education and research is key to providing students and researcher with tools for analysing spatial data avoiding vendor lock-ins and fostering a healthy freedom to test different solutions. OS tools stimulate proactiveness in students by providing a wide range of possibilities, from usage to development. This talk will show how open source tools for processing imagery and point cloud data give added value to didactics, with examples from projects at University of Padova and from Innsbruck Summer School of Alpine Research - Close Range Sensing Techniques in Alpine Terrain.