What is the best method to learn ASP.NET

All:

I am a novice/newbie to .NET programming.

I am currently using Visual Studio 2003 and VB to create ASP.NET projects. I am starting by using the walkthrough projects that are provided within VS 2003.
These walkthoughs mostly ask you to "drag & drop" throughout the project.
For example: they all ask you to drag a data adapter onto the webform and then go through the "configure data adapter wizard". This then creates the data connection and all the SQL statements needed for your project. By doing this a lot of the code to get and read data is generated by VS.
The question is: Is this the best method for me to learn or should i just open a blank code page and code everything by hand? What is the method of choice for most of you experts out here and what would you recommend for a rookie, like me?

FYI - I am going to be taking a week long class in ASP.NET in July.

I would appreciate any thoughts/suggestions!The best way to learn is by having a problem to solve.

Give yourself a simple project and then tackle it by breaking down the tasks and figuring out how to do each simple task. I find the best way to learn new technologies is to use it to solve a simple problem first so that you can run into roadblocks that are not to big and easily solveable.

Small project is the key. 2 - 3 page application is a good start and preferably doing something you need or are interested in. Once you have a basic app working, add functionality and learn the other facets of .NET programming in the process.