Merging Physical Manipulatives and Digital Interface Facilitates the Transition to Abstract Knowledge

During the history of geometry people gradually acquired physical knowledge of space, and later consolidated it in a more abstract form of knowledge, geometry. In this paper we describe how elementary school students used physical manipulatives in conjunction with the digital interface of educational software for geometry. The addition of physical manipulatives helped the students to consolidate their physical knowledge of the world and smooth the transition from the physical world to the abstract. The blending of physical manipulatives and digital interface also helped them to overcome the limits of the representation and interaction modalities of the digital interface.