This study is focused on the mental mechanisms formed by students to understand scientific concepts and the contribution of multiple semiotic systems for the representation of scientific concepts. The research focuses on how a student constructs cognitive schemata through semiotic resources, organizes them in a broader mental framework, and constructs cognitive fields. The study tries to combine different semiotic systems, researching how a student act on verbal, kinesthetic and digital representations. Which combination of semiotic systems is more effective than others and in what order can the students use them in order to understand scientific concepts? The Cog-S Model for student’s conceptualization is enriched with a semiotic analysis of digital representations, in an attempt to explore new forms of knowledge representations generated by the digital educational tools. “How are verbal, kinesthetic and digital representations differentiated so as students acquire new scientific concepts?” is an answer that this study tries to answer.

Keywords: Cognitive development, semiotic systems, Edusemiotics, Digital semiotics.