Here is a better description of Jim Weirich's Ruby Koans talk. Note that although the talk describes a beginner level talk, the Koans themselves are self-guided for more advanced users as well. Also, if you are unfamiliar with who Jim is, his bio is at the end of this email.

Ruby 101: A Test Driven Introduction to Ruby

Come with us on a journey. One that involves learning a new language
in a way that demonstrates features and culture in one tutorial.

The Ruby language has gotten a lot of buzz in the IT industry lately.
It is a highly expressive language that comes with great increases in
productivity, or so some say.

Test Driven Development is a "Best Practice" that has become quite
popular for developing rock solid application with reduced debugging
time.

Ruby and TDD, two great tastes that taste great together. This
tutorial will combine TDD and Ruby training in a way to introduce you
to the "Ruby Way" through tests.

In this tutorial we will introduce you to the Ruby language. We will
show you the basics of creating objects, control structures, using
meta programming and an extended discussion on blocks and the things
that might look a bit odd. You will walk away with a solid
understanding of basic areas of ruby, a persistent knowledge base, in
the form of a test suite, to take home and build upon, and a hunger to
learn more and join the growing community of ruby developers.

Bring your laptop, a sense of humor, and an open mind.

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Jim Weirich has been active in the software development world for over twenty-five years, with experience that ranges from real-time data acquisition for jet engine testing to image processing and web services for the financial industry. Although Jim has experience in C++ and Java/J2EE technologies, his real passion is about delivering business value in a timely and efficient manner, and one of the best ways of doing just that is leveraging the power of Ruby and Rails. Jim is very active in the Ruby community and has contributed to several Ruby projects, including the Rake build system and the RubyGems package software.