One of the places I recommend SharePoint rookies to head over to is the SharePoint developer introduction for .NET developers that Microsoft is hosting. It contains awesome introductry materials in lots of different forms:

• WebCasts
• Videos
• Virtual Labs - no need to set up a VM to get started
• Hans on Labs
• etc

There are a handful of topics covered to get you all ramped up and ready to rock the SharePoint world!

/WW