Kotlin Notebook is a great tool for educators who want to teach programming in a more hands-on way. It lets you combine runnable code, Markdown textual explanations, and visualizations in one interactive environment. There’s no need to switch between multiple windows with slides, live demos, and IDEs during lectures. You can use a single notebook to write, explain, and run Kotlin code – all in one place.
We spoke with Anastasiia Birillo, the Head of the Education Research Group at JetBrains and former Kotlin lecturer at Constructor University in Bremen, and Kotlin Notebook Team Lead Ilya Muradyan to see how the notebooks are actually used in classes.
Anastasiia has made her course notebooks publicly available. Check out the full notebook directory. For comparison, see the ‘Programming in Kotlin’ public materials – a slide-based course format.
Kotlin notebooks rely on the Kotlin Notebook plugin, which is bundled and enabled in IntelliJ IDEA by default, making setup simple.
Real classroom use
In her course at Constructor University, Anastasiia used notebooks to teach programming in Kotlin. Each topic was built around a structured notebook with organized chapters consisting of Kotlin code cells with immediate outputs and explanations written in Markdown. Students watched her walk through the material live and had a copy of the notebook to rerun everything on their own.
“I wanted students to see the whole idea, not just disconnected snippets. Kotlin notebooks made that possible. It worked really well for the interactive format of lectures with examples, prototypes, and concept exploration – they complemented IntelliJ IDEA for larger projects and practice.”
Head of the Education Research Group at JetBrains and former Kotlin lecturer at Constructor University in Bremen
Explore real teaching notebooks used at Constructor University. Here are a few shared by Anastasia:
Why teach with notebooks
Incremental execution
Kotlin notebooks support cell-based execution, allowing you to show language constructs and code snippets in an isolated way, debugging, testing, and rerunning chunks of code without restarting your whole script. This structure makes them ideal for live demos, debugging, or step-by-step teaching and live walk-throughs.
“Kotlin notebooks gave structure to my lectures,” Anastasiia says. “Students could focus on the concepts instead of reading whole code snippets.”
Markdown + code
Notebooks combine different types of data in a single interactive space. Want to mix runnable code snippets with explanations and visualizations? Kotlin Notebook helps bring programming concepts to life!
Easy setup and sharing
Everything can be easily launched in preset environments. This is especially useful for online classes, where students engage with notebooks shared with them via GitHub with minimal tech overhead. You can also easily share your work between other clients supporting notebooks – see the README for more details.
Try it yourself: Sample notebooks
Kotlin Notebook is an incredibly effective tool for explaining code and exploring concepts in a structured, runnable way.
“Thousands of developers already use notebooks for their everyday tasks. We think they address educators’ needs pretty well. Give the notebooks a try and share your feedback with us.”
Kotlin Notebook Team Lead
If you teach Kotlin, run programming workshops, or just want a better way to demo code, give Kotlin notebooks a try. They offer fast setup, more focused lessons, runnable lectures, and support for code, text, and visuals in one file.
Have you used Kotlin Notebook in your classroom or project? Let us know at education@kotlinlang.org. We’d love to hear how you are using it!
