Specifically regarding learning Ruby/Rails, I would recommend taking a look at http://railstutorial.org/ - this is the best rails tutorial I have come across.

Also, you might try learning Sinatra before Rails. Sinatra is very simple and streamlined (but still incredibly flexible and powerful since it is on Rack). Rails does a lot of things that may seem like magic, but with Sinatra it is always very easy to understand what is going on with your app. http://www.sinatrarb.com/