I have a REALLY STUPID QUESTION! you will laugh so hard.

but hopefully you will give me a hand as a final benevolent act before you die of laughing-initiated intestinal breach.
anyway, here the question is, in all its dumbness:

How do I render animations?

I have modelled in maya for years, but have never had to render more than test frames until now. my preveous rendering experience with rendering was in Animation: Master several years back, and all I had to do was set the frame range, padding etc to be rendered and hit "render". when I try to do the same thing in Maya, it still only renders the one frame I'm currently at. I have heard talk of "batch rendering" but when I try to do this, it asks me how many processors to use and then, when I click "begin batch render" it does: Nothing!
any help is appreciated, and please excuse my over(under?)whelming ignorance.