THE TORONTO STAR - September 22, 1994

SOFTWARE DOCUMENTS AFRICAN ACHIEVEMENTS

By Lisa Cherniak

Warren Salmon’s company Black Board International, documents the culture of Black Africans and their contributions to the arts and sciences. Salmon’s hands-on approach to gathering such information from conferences and travels allows Black Board to offer black youth and businesses comprehensive computer services on black culture and achievements.

“There was a need for a source of positive information,” says Salmon, who decided to fill this void after he attended a black youth conference in 1985. Four years later, Black Board International was born in North York.

Initially, only an on-line service was available, with worldwide electronic mail for cultural exchange between classrooms, a black encyclopedia, a job bank and lists of black organizations and events. When the academic community was slow to respond, Salmon, a Ryerson computer science graduate, decided to develop full-color software programs with African art as well.

His breadth of research enabled him to write text and questions on such topics as African contributions to history, mathematics, music, and science, and to package this information into ten scholastic software programs, with versions ranging from primary school to university.

Schools in Chicago, Washington and New York bough and incorporated the software programs into their curriculum during the past school year, and a number of schools in Detroit and New Orleans will be buying the software for a pilot program this fall.

But only 30 Canadian schools have bought the software.