How funny, That's the reason I decided to take digital photo instead of film. And it's a wonderful camera. You'll see that you have the sharpest, best photos in the class because most other students have cheaper regular digital cameras.

That's called "Live View" and the D3000 does not support it - sorry.

To put it simply, consider a pixel as a "dot". So the more pixels, the more "dots" there are to make up a photograph. However, you also must consider viewing distance. As an example, you would not want to view a billboard from one foot away. The best viewing distance for a billboard is from 20-30 feet or more. For most photographers a 6MP camera is more than enough. The D3000 is a great camera for a beginner or advanced photographer. At 10MP, this camera will take excellent photographs. The attached photos where taken in RAW (Nikons Native format) with a D3000 and converted to low resolution jpg for uploading (Nikon has a file size limit). Original images are 10MB each, converted jpg's are 1.5MB.

Time to get a new card, begin editing your shots down, or start storing them someplace else, like your hard-drive or a flash-drive. Maybe all three.