Note that all content will be covered during the course and it is not necessary to be familiar with the content of these readings in advance (although it will certainly help).
A decent free overview of cloud computing is Cloud Computing Made Easy.
Other free documents which give a decent overview of the cloud are Vendor sponsored copies of “Cloud for Dummies”. The good things about these versions of this book is that they are are free. The bad things about these materials is that they are particularly targeted towards a business audience and bent towards the particular platforms and services of the sponsor. If the bad seems to be outweighing the good, then consider picking up the standard copy of “Cloud Computing for Dummies” from a bookstore or a local library. Of the vendor sponsored copies we recommend the Ingram Micro version. There are also two from IBM, one called The Limited Edition and one called The Midsized Company Limited Edition.
There are also some youtube videos which give an overview of what OpenStack is: OpenStack 101 - What is OpenStack? and What is OpenStack?.
Finally the OpenStack user documentation is a good reference once you have begun working with OpenStack. Also there is some documentation specific to the Compute Canada Cloud on the Compute Canada wiki. The wiki content is a work in progress but does have some useful instructions for common tasks encountered while working with VMs and OpenStack.