SMART Boards

In his article So Long Constructivism. Hello Smart! Larry Kuehn looks at the last ten years or so in the area of technology in education and reflects on where we have come from and where we are going in the area of technology changing the learning environment.  Kuehn begins by looking at what was known as the constructivist technology revolution that was supposed to change education in a fundamental way.  He reflects that what they said would happen did not in that the teacher has remained the primary teacher and not turned into a guide for the technology doing the teaching.  He postulates that the teacher instead of moving to the side has used the technology as a tool and has remained the center focus.  Ultimately Kuehn likens the Smart Board to the modern day overhead projector with the ability to go so many places in that it can access different areas of the internet and provide students with a visual tool to learning. 
What I found interesting about this article was his view of teachers and people always making new things to be the cats meow so to speak in that they think that this technology will revolutionize the way we teach in such a way that it will render the teacher almost useless.  I would say that with this new tech coming in such as the Smart boards it certainly has the potential to turn the teacher into more of a guide than a center teacher, but that depends on how the teacher decides to use it.  If, like with the overhead, it becomes just another visual tool for the teacher to use while teaching a lesson with which they are able to access greater amounts of information in a better way it will remain that way.  If it is used as a teaching tool in a way where the students are being taught by the smart board then it changes what the teachers role in the classroom is.  Ultimately I think (as does Kuehn) that it will remain a tool.