**1. Introduction**

Digital learning games have become a reference point in the educational field, in terms of positive effect of their use on learning and motivation [1,2]. However, why they are used in education is an interesting issue to be investigated from a broad perspective including, on one hand, the psychological processes underlying learning and, on the other, the potential new technologies offer. In this chapter, we will try to describe both mentioned perspectives and to illustrate how they may concretely interact through two project descriptions.

Since their birth and maybe even before, children start learning about the world around them. Day by day they can count on wider sensorimotor functions that open their cognitive devel‐ opment in new ways.

In the period of their life that goes from few months to 3–4 years, the hands are fundamental in conveying knowledge. A child points something and he/she handles, touches, tastes and manipulates while understanding an object's features and functions.

These everyday observations eminently reflect in psychologists' perspectives; consider, for example, Piaget [3], Papert [4] and Bruner [5] who recognise a fundamental role to manipu‐ lative activities for psychological development and cognitive representations at birth. Also Vygotsky [6], the other giant father of cognitive development theory, believed that interaction with the environment was an important way a child could learn, not the only one indeed. In his opinion, cognitive development relies on input from other people as well, thus underlying the importance of the historical and cultural context children live in.

Of course, learning in adults is not limited to pointing, reaching, touching and manipulating as, along human cognitive development and thanks to learning processes, the 'concrete' manipulative acts are gradually interiorised and become part of our neurocognitive structures. They are not actually performed as they are but they become 'simulated' actions (symbolic acts) in a virtual (mind) space [7].

In spite of this interiorisation, the use of hands (or more in general, the body) together with the related cognitive representation of physical space is a latent and essential psychological resource for learning and developmental processes. They can emerge when the context and the environmental conditions allow humans to use hands and their representation. It is a sort of bias that is, probably, the main reason why we think about Internet as a geometrical (virtual) space or why the (computer) 'mouse' and the 'touch screens' are immediately intuitive. Adopting this view, the mouse extends 'pointing' and 'reaching' actions in a computer screen graphic space, and the current 'touch-screen' technology allows us to manipulate digital virtual objects. Recently, new technologies are candidates to enhance our attitude to learn by manipulating. If we equip common objects with sensors and connect them in wireless mode with a remote computer, we build something similar to what is called Internet of Things [8] that permits an easy interaction with (smart) objects through new interfaces (glasses, gloves, visors, etc.) or by traditional manipulation coupled with (sophisticated) computer programs (see, e.g. handwriting recognition systems).

We think that the new chances offered by the smart object technology could produce innova‐ tive learning/teaching environments to enhance neurocognitive development especially in training context. Moreover, with these tools, we could recover traditional and well-known psycho-pedagogical practices that are not widely and massively applied because of their expensiveness. For example, these technologies can be applied to traditional educational materials like logic blocks or teaching tiles. These are manipulative materials specifically designed to teach a wide range of subjects (mathematics, geometry, languages, geography, etc.) and abilities or soft skills (problem solving, creative thinking, cooperative behaviour, etc.) for children aged from 3 to 10. These materials have a strong drawback: they can be used individually or in small groups of students (3–4 children maximum) and require a constant supervision by teachers, parents, educators, etc. This represents a strong constraint, also economic, for their wide employment. But we think that smart technologies (software and hardware) can be exploited to overcome this constraint and express the huge educational potential lying in these materials/practices.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the principal approaches to the learning process from the cognitive one to the embodied cognition through the constructivism. This theoretical excursus will lead us to describe two projects we are involved in: the Block Magic project and the INF@NZIA DIGI.tales 3.6 project. These projects have produced interesting educational applications that can help in enhancing traditional educational materials to make them meet the technological challenge.
