81 Blend81 Blend
A small company building thoughtful tools for education.
Our first product, Enacture, is being developed to help college faculty hone their teaching practice through reflective inquiry, instructional memory, and support for planning and instructional decision-making.
Meet EnactureWhat we do
81 Blend develops tools at the intersection of education, instructional design, and responsible use of emerging technology.
We are interested in products that support professional judgment, fit into the work people are already doing, and become useful enough to earn their place there.
Enacture
Hone your teaching practice.
Enacture is a persistent instructional partner for college faculty. It helps instructors plan, reflect, work through teaching problems, and return to earlier reasoning without continually reconstructing course context.
Learn about EnactureHow we work
We build around a few commitments that shape both the product and the business.
People are not the product.
Our business should earn revenue by providing something useful, not by monetizing the people who use it or the material they contribute.
Useful beats engaging.
We are not trying to maximize time on platform. A good product should sometimes help you finish sooner.
People should remain in control of their work.
Materials, reflection, memory, and professional judgment should remain visible and manageable by the people who created them.
Use technology where it earns its place.
We use emerging technology where it improves meaningful work and keep it out of the way elsewhere. In Enacture, language models support the work without replacing professional judgment.
Why 81 Blend
81 Blend was originally the name of an herbal tea my wife made from plants grown around our suburban home. Our street number was 81.
The tea took some planning and care, but much of the work was quieter than that: knowing what to plant, paying attention to what was growing, learning from what did not work, and giving things enough time and space to become what they could.
The name stayed with me when I needed one for this company. It still suggests something about the kind of work I want 81 Blend to do: begin close to the source, care about quality, learn through iteration, and resist forcing things before they are ready.
There was plenty of teaching and learning in that original process. Nothing important emerged fully formed on the first try.
The tea was good, too. That helped.
About 81 Blend
81 Blend is an independent company building thoughtful tools for education. Our first product is Enacture.