OpenMP is a nice, relatively simple and ubiquitous interface to start with the parallel programming. With a few learning-by-doing examples in C I introduce the

• threads
• getinfo

and

• work sharing between the threads.

With these one can play with the typical useful algorithms, like

• searching for the maximum by reduction
• study the speed up with parallel reduction algorithms for sums
• perform a simple prefix sum scan.

There is also a small code that compares the parallel and simple FFT execution.

Other links:

• Full OpenMP tutorial