On pre 2.0 IPython clicking on a notebook link took you to a temporary kernel address (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8889/10327f95-f1f6-4016-80f0-e23c477edbfe
).
Since 2.0 these links are permanent so you can just provide direct notebook links to your students, e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8888/notebooks/Test.ipynb