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Getting started (Deepnote)

Follow these steps to start writing essays within a few minutes, without any software installation or configuration.

Create a Deepnote account

  1. Open the Deepnote sign-up page.
  2. Enter your email address. Use your academic (rather than personal) email to get the free education plan.
  3. Check the CAPTCHA box and click Continue with email.

  4. Check your email for a sign-in link from Deepnote and click it.

    Note

    There are no passwords for Deepnote when signing up by email. If you explicitly log out of your Deepnote account, see our guide for how to log in.

  5. In Deepnote, answer the introductory questions, which may depend on the type of email you used to sign up.

    • If you’re asked what you are working on, type Writing essays and click Continue.
    • If you’re asked to name your workspace, which is where you will store your projects, give it a unique and descriptive name, e.g. “Your Name’s projects”.
    • If you’re asked to invite your teammates, click Continue.
    • If you’re asked for your data sources, click Take me to Deepnote.

You should now be looking at an empty notebook that is part of the Welcome to Deepnote project within your workspace. You won’t need that project for writing algorithmic essays, but you may wish to keep it, to later explore Deepnote’s data science features.

For the moment, just proceed with the next steps.

Duplicate our project

We created an essay project in our Deepnote workspace, to be copied to your workspace. The project has all necessary software pre-installed.

  1. Open our project.
  2. Click on the blue Duplicate button in the top right corner.
  3. Choose the name of your workspace from the drop-down menu.

  4. Click Duplicate project to finish the process.

    Note

    Do not check the box to make your project private: that would prevent sharing your essays later with others.

    After a few moments, you will see the project in your workspace, with the name Algorithmic Essays - Duplicate at the top of the screen.

  5. Click on the three dots in the top right corner.

  6. Select Rename project from the drop-down menu.
  7. In the text box that appears, type a name for your project, e.g. “Your Name’s essays”.

You should now see some notebooks in the left panel.

Copy a template

We provide two templates as starting points for your essay. One template is simpler, with introductory programming in mind, the other is for data structures and algorithms courses. To write an essay, copy one of the templates and edit that copy.

  1. In the left panel, hover your mouse over the template you wish to copy.
  2. Click on the three dots that appear next to the template’s name.
  3. In the pop-up menu that appears, select Duplicate.

This creates a new notebook, with the name of the template followed by ‘-2’, and opens it.

Once you decided your essay’s topic, you can rename the notebook.

Write the essay

Now that you have copied and renamed a template, you can start writing your essay in Deepnote.

If you’re familiar with the classic Jupyter interface, we recommend you first read about the differences with Deepnote.

For a video introduction to notebooks and Deepnote, see our Deepnote guide.

For guidance on writing algorithmic essays, see our writing and coding guides.

Info

If an error occurs in a cell, click on the Show error details box in the bottom right corner of the cell to show the full stack trace.

Share the essay

When you are ready to share the essay with others, do the following.

  1. Enable sharing for your workspace.
  2. Click the Share button in the top right corner of the screen.
  3. To the right of Anyone with a link to this project, click on the drop-down menu and select Comment.
  4. Click the highlighted blue link to this project, to copy the link.
  5. Share that link with your peers by email or by posting in your course’s forum.

For suggestions on how to ask for feedback on your shared essay, see our feedback guide

Comment on essays

Once an essay has been shared with you, you can comment on it. See our guide on how to leave feedback. If you have comment permissions, do one of the following to make a comment:

  • Press Ctrl + Alt + C (Mac: Cmd + Alt + C) if the cell is selected.
  • Click the speech bubble icon in the top right corner of the cell.

After typing your comment, press the upwards blue arrow to finish.

Warning

You must be logged into your account to comment on notebooks shared with you. If you’re not logged in, your comments are marked as ‘anonymous user’ and the essay’s author won’t see them.