I'm a longtime Earthdawn fan. I've played every edition, been in 6 or so campaigns and run 2. My time playing Earthdawn outstrips my time playing all other systems combined. Here's what I've learned in basic:

1) Make sure the character sheet has the step table on the front page. Even if you print out handy cheat-sheets with the basic rules and mechanics on them, the step table is more important and should be prominent at all times for ever player. I prefer Ash's character sheets, they work nicely. I think there's an updated step table for 3rd edition on his site.

2) Adventuring is best done in stages - as you gain in circles, you also start going on more important missions. This sounds obvious, but you really need to pace things in Earthdawn. It's very easy to get in over your head and end up with a TPK. You should probably gift the party with a Last Chance Salve (one, and only one) while they're still 1st circle. Then you introduce them to the setting and mechanics by having them guard caravans, travel to several of the cities in the setting (Barter town, Vistrimon and Kratas, in that order, are my favorites for this) and perform services for important people in those cities. This will not only get your players contacts and a support network which you can later use to direct plot their way, but it also will get them up to about 3rd or 4th circle.

3) No Kaer delving until 3rd circle. That's about when everyone's become comfortable with the basics of what they can do and the Casters have started to get a bit of magical healing. At this point, you can throw serious threats at them. When Kaer delving, you needn't always throw the horror-infested kaer at them first thing. Some of my most fun kaer delving experiences were with kaers that simply hadn't opened yet - all the defenses were still in place, and you had to convince the people inside to let you in, and once they did there was usually a really insanely divergent culture inside, which always leads to interesting RP.

4) At 4th circle, hand out a few magic items. Make them interesting, tie them to plot. Don't hand out generic magic items until the party is higher circle - they don't need them and the items tend to skew power levels. But by 5th and 6th circle, all of the melee types should have at least 1 custom item and a couple of generic ones - because otherwise they run into much the same issue as melee types in D&D, lack of interesting options. It's not nearly as big of an issue - ED casters are closer to tier 2 than tier 1, and almost all of the ED paths are at least tier 3 - but without the boost of 'something unique' that they get from a good custom item, it starts to get to be a bit dull playing the melee character, and life starts getting really tough for the non-fighters like Troubadors and Traveled Scholars.

5) By 7th circle, the party should be leaving Barsaive. At this point, they're becoming the movers and shakers of the world, so have them move and shake. Let them meet dragons, and battle armies and do all the epic stuff that the setting is meant to encourage at higher level play. By the time you get to this level, you should probably go out and find a copy of the Theran Empire sourcebook from 2nd edition to give you an idea of what the rest of the world is like, or at least make up your own stuff.

Generally, getting from 1st circle to 7th circle takes about 40-80 game sessions, if you're handing out legend at around the recommended rate. If you're interested in one theme or another (for instance, if you want to explore outside Barsaive early on), you can adapt the difficulty of the adventuring to the level of the party, but from my experience there just seems to be a natural progression built into the system, that as you go up in circle, the scope of the gameplay changes. Kind of like idea behind the 3 tiers of play in 4th edition D&D.

Hope that helps. If you've got specific questions or requests just ask, or PM me.