Jupyter Notebooks for Beginners with Python

If your kids are interested in coding in Python, Jupyter Notebooks is a great way to get started to have your kids document their progress in learning how to show their work while also seeing the results on screen.

Once your kids have started learning the very basics of Python, you may find that they have a need to show their work to document their coding outside of commenting and notating their work in their coding script.

In this post, I share with you some the best tips and tricks to get started with Jupyter Notebooks for free.

How to Setup Jupyter Notebooks on Your Device

To set up Jupyter Notebooks on your device you'll want to first install Anaconda Distribution. During the installation process, it will install all of the different libraries (set of various premade functions you can use) that will allow you to accelerate what you can do with your code.

This tutorial is one of the best I've found online that clearly explains how to do this.

Languages to Learn for Jupyter

Markdown

You can write markdown as well as code inside of your notebook. Markdown code just allows you to format your explanations into headings, colorful font, and annotate in sections of your code.

Python

You will also want to learn Python. Before installing Jupyter Notebooks, I would highly recommend learning the basics of Python before getting started.

Best Python Libraries with Jupyter Notebooks for Data Science and AI for Kids

Jupyter Notebooks helps kids also get a fundamental understanding of using math, statistics, data science, and machine learning.

Spacy.io
Chartify
Jupytext
Optimus
AdaNet
TensorFlow

Intermediate Jupyter Notebook Project

If your kids start coding, here's a very easy and useful project your kids can do with Jupyter Notebooks. Let's say they have an excel sheet with a lot of data that they want to analyze. Below is a video that teaches you how to read and create various tables and graphs with Jupyter Notebooks below.

AWS Sagemaker Notebooks vs Jupyter Notebooks

The difference between Jupyter Notebooks and AWS Sagemaker is that AWS Sagemaker will allow you to do more with the services that are on top of it. AWS Sagemaker Notebooks will allow you to spend a Jupyter Notebook up, but it will also cost you money because you'll be using AWS services behind the scenes. On the flipside, if you install Jupyter Notebooks on your own computer, you'll be consuming the power of your own computer to power the code you are writing. If you find that your computer is hogging a lot of resources for running your code, that's when you'll want to transition to Amazon Sagemaker Notebooks. These are two of the best resources that I've found explaining Amazon Sagemaker to have you understand it fully.

Amazon SageMaker Overview

Amazon SageMaker Introduction to Jupyter Notebooks

Final Thoughts

Getting started with Jupyter Notebooks is only the beginning of what kids can do with Python! Being able to see the code on screen as well as use various libraries while allowing parts of the functions to output is quite satisfying. This allows kids to show their work and teach what they know while coding.

More Inspiration on Coding Platforms for Kids

These are some of the best platforms we've found that can help foster kids ability to code. These platforms have been built to support kids as well as allow them to grow and scale their learning journey in computer science and programming.