2026 NYC Battle of the Boroughs Minecraft Challenge

Welcome to the Minecraft Challenge

The Minecraft Challenge is an annual event that the New York City Department of Education offers. This year's challenge is TBA.

During the challenge, you will:

• Visit and talk with the Chancellor of NYC Public Schools (the school system's leader), the Mayor, Borough Presidents (the leaders of each borough) and education leaders to learn about the Minecraft Challenge.

• Learn more about the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are goals to make it so everyone in the world is treated with dignity and respect and gets what they need to flourish. These include Ending Poverty (people being very poor), Zero Hunger (everyone gets enough quality food so that everyone is healthy), Good Health and Well Being (everyone is able to see doctors, dentists, mental health care professionals when they need them and get food medical care as well as live a healthy life style), Gender Equality (everyone is treated with respect and has the same rights regardless of whether they are male or female or in the LGBQ+ community), Clean Water and Sanitation (everyone is able to get enough clean water and has a toilet to use to handle their waste in a sanitary manner), and Affordable and Clean Energy (everyone is able to get energy in a way that doesn't harm the environment). There are a total of 17 SDGs. You can learn more about them from the United Nations

• Design a solution to build a better NYC - redesign the Kingsbridge Armory so that it supports the community. This includes both inside the building and the area outside the building. Students in class will have to submit this as part of the project. Those doing it outside of class (mostly 6th and 8th graders) should do this, but don't have to.

• Create a video to discuss what you learned.

  1.  For students submitting this to the challenge, you need to meet the requirements of the NYC Challenge.

• Notebook entries: Throughout the challange, you will create different notebook entries to let Dr. Utz know what you are doing.

Due Date: Priority Deadline: Friday, March 1

If you have a NYC PS iPad, you should have Minecraft already on it. If you don't, you can download it for Macs, Windows, iPads and Chromebooks.

If you have your own or a NYC PS iPad, Chromebook or other NYC PS device, you may use it in class. 

Resources:

There are a lot of resources for you:

• Dr. Utz - Please ask me with any questions

• Mr. DiBlasie - you can play Minecraft with his afterschool group on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in room 229

• Tuesdays - Chess day - You may come to room 131 and play Minecraft Education or work on a project. You will have to work independently. My focus will be on chess, but you can still use the computers.

• Wednesdays after school - you're welcome to come to room 131. There will be a Minecraft lesson and a Minecraft project to work one

• NYC PS Webpage. This webpage has lots of information.

• Montauk Google Classroom: A Classroom for Montauk students has been set up: here's the link. The code is: yaoowry. All students may join. I will be happy to make a separate classroom for your group so that your group will be able to have private conversations (the conversations will be monitored for abuse and language by me) as well as put up Minecraft hosting information.

• If you need hosting, I might be able to do this. I am trying to find out if I can host more than one world at a time with my account.