From navigation and furniture assembly to understanding planetary motion and DNA structure, making sense of spatial representations is an essential skill. Despite a large number of studies consistently highlighting the importance of spatial thinking and its relation to academic success, the impact of spatial representations on spatial conceptualization has not yet been adequately studied, and research has not been able to provide researchers and educators with design principles for the integration of spatial training into formal education. At the same time the use of geotechnologies, like GPS, for educational purposes has sparked the interest in the field. In this design-based research, we use an embodied instrumentation approach aiming to understand what kind of spatial meanings 12-year-old children develop while using digital spatial representations during navigation. The findings of this study suggest that the integration of dynamic screen-based representations into real navigational activities offer a rich context for spatial thinking development.