After Lynn Nahmens graduated from college in 2005, she was like many of her peers, unsure about what her next step would be. With a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from the Louisiana Scholar’s College at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La., she held a number of jobs working in education and retail.

But it was after her participation as a TeachUp! Intern with Digital Opportunity Trust , that Nahmens realized what career path she wanted to follow – teaching.

“I always thought I would be good at teaching, but I didn’t know if I wanted to do something in business or in the corporate world,” she said. “The Internship was the defining moment. My experience at (Rudolph) Matas tipped the scale towards teaching.”

Nahmens was selected as a TeachUp! Intern in 2006 and was placed at Rudolph Matas Elementary in Metairie, La., working there from January through May 2007.

As an Intern, she worked with teachers and administrators to develop and implement new ways to bring technology into the teaching curriculum.  She says one of her biggest accomplishments was working on a project with one of the school’s third-grade teachers to set up Internet chat rooms and e-mail accounts with Gaggle.Net for her students.

“I think it really helped," Nahmens said about the project, which allowed students to chat with their teacher and other students about homework and other classroom projects. “(The teacher) was really happy with the results. And I’m almost positive she wants to continue it this year.”

And Nahmens said she is hoping to work with the new TeachUp! Intern at Rudolph Matas to continue the project. In fact, this fall she began her new job as a teacher at Rudolph Matas, working as a special education teacher with students who are orthopedically-impaired.

“I’ll be pursuing an alternative certification so I can get my teacher certification,” she said, explaining that she’ll be taking night classes at a local university while getting her state certification. “Hopefully I’ll be at Matas teaching for the next two years.”

And while she is at Matas, Nahmens will get an opportunity to see the benefits that the new technology and training has had in the classroom. When she was an Intern at the school, she said students and teachers gave positive reviews to the use of technology in the classroom.

“Students today grow up in technology – they have Playstations and MP3 players,” Nahmens said. “And going to school with lecture-style learning all day is not going to hold their attention. If they can watch a PowerPoint, they can be more engaged and have a lot more fun learning and wanting to learn.”