This website is a European repository for science educators with a special focus on informal learning environments and methodologies. It is the result of a three-year project funded by the European Union called pencil. pencil is an action research project based on pilot actions that 14 informal institutions (mainly science centres) have carried out in eleven European countries and Israel.

This website is linked to the European gateway to science education, Xplora, but represents a different experiment, addressing different needs. It is more a proposal than a finished website, because its philosophy is not sustainable in the framework of the pencil project. While Xplora is a very large repository based on the philosophy of open source, where registered users may upload whatever materials they like, this website has a scientific committee made up of researchers in science education who select the materials after having reviewed them. Its focus with regards to target audience is more on science centre or museum practitioners and informal science educators, but we believe that its contents might be of interest for school teachers as well. We surveyed target audience needs through interviews and open discussions with professionals from the fourteen institutions involved in the pencil project. We also interviewed leading personalities in the field of informal science learning such as museum experts or academic researchers. Video recordings of these interviews can be viewed on the website. Accounting for practitioners lack of time for searching through large lists of resources of going through long readings we chose to make a strong selection of the materials to publish and to prepare short summaries of research articles for quick reference. For users who wish to go deeper into topics (and have time enough) links to further resources are proposed.