Its not a noob thing lol, if u haven't dealt with it before you wont know what it is.
a partnership is more long term and has a split revenue share between you and the person u have the partnership with whereas a sponsorship is when someone pays you to do a certain thing or represent someone or something.
for example:
Youtuber partnership, and money on a video is split between you and a network, in return the network deals with legal issues if the occur, free things like music, gfx ect
YouTube sponsorship, a brand might pay u $50 to talk about a service they provide like being paid to talk about an app at the begging of the video or paid to do a review on a product.
hope this was clear enough, if not tell me what was confusing and ill try to clarify better.
theres a service called famebit, they are good at getting people sponsorships but u need a certain amount of subs. Small brands for anything you can just email and ask them to send u something to review and they might send a free product or even pay depending on channel growth.
for partnerships just google youtube networks and look for one with open contract so u can leave at anytime.