Hi Kori,
1) read some quick overview about dependency injection, singletons, proxy design
patterns. you don't have to go very much into the details, but at leas some high-level knowledge...
2) there is a very good tutorial on the
mkyong website.
these are short and smart....quite useful
3) download sts eclipse and try to remake these example
4) books (spring in action), forum, etc.
Regards,
Csaba