Hi, welcome, hope you enjoy this forum and find it useful.
It will be better if you can get some books form National Library about photography for beginner. After you finish a book, you will have better understating about photography.
Not really, but reading a book will get you a better overall view and have a systematic learning,
Here you will get very confuse if someone giving all kind of suggestion and options, it may or may not help you in learning photography. In short, you need to filter out what are the useful information.
Hmm... I wun dismiss PnS for their learning ability but make sure he gets the right one. Not one that's fully automatic with little or no room to learn.