I worked through this book and thought it was a very good basic intro course: http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Arduino-Make-Projects/dp/0596155514
It gives a couple of examples and walks you through understanding the code involved... note that all code involved is in the basics code available in the IDE
The final project they give is kind of to completely blow the poor newbie's mind, going from making a light blink when you push a button to pulling information from a website and making a tri-color LED glow a certain color based on the number of times particular words appear