Everything we do this year runs in Google Colab — a free service that runs Python notebooks in your browser. Nothing to install, nothing to download. You just need your LCPS Google account.

Work through this once on the first day. It takes about fifteen minutes.

1. Open Colab and check which account you’re using

Go to colab.research.google.com.

Now the important part. Look at the circle in the top-right corner — that’s your account avatar. Click it and confirm it shows your LCPS school account (the one ending in @lcps.org).

Why this matters more than it sounds. If you’re also signed into a personal Gmail, Colab quietly picks whichever account your browser considers the default — and that’s often the personal one. Everything will look like it’s working, but your files save to the wrong Drive and you won’t find them later. If the avatar shows the wrong account, click it and switch, or sign out of the other account entirely for the school day.

Get in the habit of glancing at that avatar every time you open Colab.

2. Make your first notebook

From the Colab home screen, click New notebook (bottom-right of the dialog, or File → New notebook).

You’ll get a page with one empty box. That box is a cell — that’s where code goes. Click into it and type:

print("Hello from Colab!")
2 + 2

Now press Shift+Enter to run it. (Or click the ▶ button on the left of the cell.)

The first time you run anything, Colab takes ten or twenty seconds to connect to a machine. After that it’s fast. You should see Hello from Colab! and 4 appear below the cell.

Try a couple more things — add a new cell with the + Code button and run:

import math
print(math.pi)

name = "your name here"
print("Hi, " + name)

Nothing you do here can break anything. Experiment.

Rename it

Click the title at the top-left — it says Untitled0.ipynb — and rename it to something like first-notebook.ipynb. Colab saves automatically as you work.

3. Where your notebooks live

Your notebook already saved itself to Google Drive, in a folder Colab creates automatically called Colab Notebooks.

Open drive.google.com, go to My Drive, and you’ll see it. Your notebook is inside.

That’s where everything you make in Colab goes. Colab always saves there and doesn’t give you a choice of folder, so don’t fight it — just know where to look. You’ll be back in Drive regularly to rename things (Step 5).

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Drive sorts alphabetically, so this groups everything by unit for free. And when you can’t remember where something is, just search Drive for a word from the name — that’s faster than clicking through folders anyway.

4. Open a course notebook from this site

Every notebook on this site has three links next to it: view, download, and colab. Try it now — go to Unit 01: Foundations and click the colab link next to Introduction to JupyterLab and Python.

It should open straight in Colab, ready to run. You may need to click Run anyway on a warning about the notebook not being authored by Google — that’s expected, it just means the file came from outside Google.

Read this next part carefully, because it’s the mistake everyone makes once.

5. Always “Save a copy in Drive” before you work

When you open a notebook from this site, Colab loads it straight from the course repository. You can run it and edit it — but it is not your copy, and your changes are not being saved. Close the tab and everything you typed is gone.

So the very first thing you do, every time:

File → Save a copy in Drive

A new tab opens with your own copy, named Copy of <whatever>.ipynb. That’s the one you work in — the original tab is still the unsaved read-only version, so close it so you don’t mix them up.

Quick way to tell which one you’re in: your saved copy has a normal Drive title at the top-left and autosaves as you type. The read-only original doesn’t.

Then go rename it

Colab drops the copy into Colab Notebooks with that clumsy Copy of name and no way to change either at save time. Fixing it takes ten seconds:

  1. Open drive.google.com → My Drive → Colab Notebooks
  2. Find the file (it’ll be at the top if you sort by Last modified)
  3. Right-click → Rename
  4. Give it a name like u04-mushroom.ipynb — unit number first, per Step 3

Do this right after you save the copy, while you still remember what the notebook was. A folder full of Copy of Copy of Untitled3.ipynb in April is a self-inflicted problem.

Troubleshooting

“My notebook disappeared.” You probably worked in the version opened from the course site without saving a copy. Unfortunately it’s gone. Save the copy first from now on.

“I can’t find the file I saved.” Check that you were on your @lcps.org account (Step 1). Then look in My Drive → Colab Notebooks — everything Colab saves goes there. Sort by Last modified and it’ll be at the top.

“It says I need to sign in.” Your browser isn’t signed into a Google account. Sign in with your LCPS account and reload.

“It’s asking me to allow access to my Google Drive.” Some notebooks later in the year mount your Drive so they can read data files. Say yes — but only for notebooks from this course site.

“The cell is taking forever / says ‘Connecting’.” Normal on the first run of a session while Colab assigns you a machine. If it hangs for more than a minute, Runtime → Restart session usually fixes it.

“I get a warning that the notebook wasn’t authored by Google.” Expected for any notebook from outside Google, including all of ours. Click Run anyway.