John Thole

Somerset West

Profile of John Thöle – Educational ICT specialist

John Thöle is a founding member of Edunova in the UK (2000) and in South Africa (2005). He is a qualified teacher and was Head of ICT at Pridwin School in Gauteng before taking up the Head of ICT position at Aldro School in Surrey, UK. During this time his focus has been on the leadership and management of ICT and, in this respect, John has worked closely with Heads and Senior Strategic teams to ensure the professional implementation of ICT. He has also had key roles in the selection and procurement of ICT infrastructure and the project management of large scale ICT deployments.

John spent 3 years as the business development manager of an IBM Premier business partner in the UK where he developed further commercial grounding in ICT. John has continued to work alongside clients working on a transformational agenda.

In the application of ICT to learning activities, John brings the following competencies:
• Good teaching and learning practices
• Using ICT to enhance educational and learning achievement
• Leadership and management of ICT development programmes
• Building ICT skills amongst teachers, students and communities

Whilst at Edunova in the UK (10 years), John had leadership responsibility for:

City Academies Programme
• Developing and implementing a learner focused ICT strategy for the Unity City Academy in Middlesbrough, one of the first Public Private partnership schools in the UK.
• Advising the Ministry of Defence regarding the ICT development requirements and procurement process for the educational needs of a leading college
• Developing Edunova’s methodology for the learning-led design of integrated ICT strategies for schools and colleges
• Developing the ICT strategy for the City Academy, Bristol (1200 learners)
• ICT development, direction setting and strategy for the largest school in the UK, Thomas Deacon Academy (2200 learners)
• ICT strategy, procurement, installation and commissioning of ICT for the Stockley Academy in London (1500 learners)

Consultancy
• The ICT change management and strategic leadership of the Weston Education Partnership
• Chairing the Middlesbrough Education Authority ICT Forum for two years – this body comprises multi stakeholder ICT decision makers across the Middlesbrough community
• Delivering, on behalf of BECTA, a series of advi

  • Work
    • Edunova
  • Education
    • H.D.E. (Wits) Cert. Ed (Univ. Surrey)