Everybody teaching physics (and other sciences) will already be aware - I hope - of the changes that will take place this year with the Leaving Cert exams. Students in these subjects will be using a new answer-book, designed for science and introduced to facilitate question-by-question online marking.
It all seems straightforward enough, but I'm a little afraid that it's the sort of thing that students (and teachers) can fixate upon in the run-up to exams and become overly concerned about. In particular, students who don't get to see the new books in advance might become concerned, and the SEC have sent only one copy of the new answer book to each school so it seems likely to me that not everybody will get to see it. With that in mind I've added a copy of the new book to the general resource page here.
I was a little worried, though, that they were deliberately limiting the number of books in circulation to minimise the risk of cheating, so my version is badly scanned to distinguish it from the real thing. (I promise that that's why it's so badly done....)
Also, many thanks to Clare Atkinson for putting together a version of the book that could be used for school exams over the next week or so. It always helps to have 5th year exams as close as possible to the LC. It's also available here.
The SEC circular on online marking is also there. My own informal summary of its key points is...
Use a Blue or Black pen. Pencil OK for diagrams and graphs. Definitely no gel pens
Use a new page for each question
Clearly enter the question number in the box at the top of the page
The graph paper is now included in the answer-book