Best Buy Teen Tech Center

Minnesota Vikings visit Teen Tech Center

22 Dec: Minnesota Vikings share what tech careers are possible with Minneapolis youth

Last week, a group of teens in Minneapolis had the opportunity to visit with Minnesota Vikings players and staff at a local Best Buy Teen Tech Center. Not to talk about the latest game, but to hear how technology is used on and off the field.

The event, hosted at the Best Buy Teen Tech Center at Summit Academy OIC kicked off with a panel discussion featuring Vikings vice president of information technology Cheryl Nygaard, director of business analytics Kendall Peters and football analyst Chris French.

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03 Nov: Teens take a swing at VR with demo from Best Buy, Minnesota Twins

About 30 youth at a Best Buy Teen Tech Center in Minneapolis recently got a behind-the-headset look at how virtual reality (VR) and professional baseball can work together.

The Minnesota Twins and REM5, a Minneapolis-based immersive technology company, stopped by the Teen Tech Center at the Brian Coyle Community Center to give VR demos with a program that simulates real-life jobs.

They also showed off their recent project, Twins XR: The Art of Baseball, an immersive, 3D experience that showcases digital art and player highlights.

Adam Pettway, Nadvia Davis and Saul Zelaya are mentors at Best Buy Teen Tech Center locations.

26 Oct: Meet three mentors who are making a difference at Teen Tech Centers

Best Buy Teen Tech Center locations offer youth access to cutting-edge tech and opportunities to discover new passions. But most importantly, they’re safe spaces where teens can connect with mentors who are committed to guiding them to reach their full potential.

These mentors — both the Teen Tech Centers’ on-staff coordinators and dedicated volunteers, including many Best Buy employees — invest their time into young people. They work closely with teens on a variety of projects and serve as a sounding board to talk about their day-to-day activities or their passions and dreams.

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08 Oct: Best Buy customers contribute $5.5M to support Teen Tech Centers

As part of Best Buy’s longstanding commitment to building brighter futures for teens through tech, we recently invited our customers to join us in that work — and, wow, did they ever deliver.

Between July 11 and Oct. 2, customers contributed more than $5.5 million to help support the Best Buy Teen Tech Center program. The campaign sought to educate customers about this initiative and allowed them to make a tax-deductible donation when making a purchase, including at a Best Buy store, BestBuy.com

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10 Feb: Best Buy’s Career Pathways program propels teens to tomorrow’s careers — today

In New Orleans — a city steeped in music and the birthplace of jazz — a Best Buy Teen Tech Center is honoring the town’s rich musical tradition by helping up-and-coming artists shine. How? By giving them the tools to turn passion into profession.

Each week, Raymie Wolfe meets with a group of local teens and helps them take a deep dive into electronic music production, video creation and audio engineering. By following a curriculum developed through a partnership with the GRAMMY MUSEUM, the teens are able to earn industry-level certifications in audio production, as well as become proficient in using industry-standard tools and recording equipment.

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12 Sep: Detroit teens build community through technology

DETROIT — Earlier this summer, a group of teens fanned out across southwest Detroit with an assignment: Make a video that celebrates their neighborhood using every letter from A to Z.

So, they split up and illustrated landmarks by letter. For instance, C is for Clark Park. Then they took photos and video, learned how to do voice-overs and recorded them at the Best Buy Teen Tech Center. They’ll edit and aim to complete the video this fall.

“Once you get them going, they’ll learn and teach me,” said Francisco “Cisco” Tinoco, the center’s coordinator and ABC project assigner.

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18 Mar: Teen wins global award for poem she wrote for Best Buy video

In just over a year, Naje Wright went from being a curious teen with a passion for technology to winning a prestigious global creative award.

Naje, 16, recently won the The One Club for Creativity’s “Emerging Writer” award at the One Screen Short Film Festival for a “spoken word” poem she wrote for a Best Buy marketing campaign. The other winners included film makers, ad agencies and big brands from around the world.

Naje was one of three teens featured in the campaign aimed at boosting awareness for the young people supported by Best Buy’s Teen Tech Centers, which train teens from underserved  communities for tech-reliant jobs in the future.

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11 Feb: Students get career inspiration from Grammy tour

One of the biggest nights in music took place Sunday in Los Angeles: the 61st Annual Grammy Awards®. The show brought together celebrities and some of the most well-known artists in music from across all genres.

It took a lot of technology and expertise to pull it all off — a great example for teens interested in related careers.

A group of such students was able to get an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the action, thanks to Best Buy and corporate partners at JBL.

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07 Jan: ‘Technology is really what we need to help us succeed’ [VIDEO]

Students from the Best Buy Teen Tech Center in Chicago are getting their hands on virtual reality tech and the possibilities it holds for the future.

A partnership among Best Buy, Facebook and Oculus is helping to make VR technology real for Chicago youth. It’s part of Best Buy’s commitment to enrich lives through technology. Together with our partners, we’re building brighter futures for teens around the country.

“Technology opens up more opportunities for people,” said Nicolas, a Teen Tech Center student.

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14 Nov: Best Buy, Oculus Bring VR to Teens at Chicago Teen Tech Center

Virtual reality is becoming one of the leading technology trends, and Oculus has teamed up with Best Buy to bring this emerging tech to students in underserved communities.

Students at the Best Buy Teen Tech Center at Little Black Pearl school in Chicago were recently surprised by Oculus with VR headsets to use in the center. These headsets will introduce students to the possibilities of VR, while also showing how the cutting-edge technology can be applied to their own future career aspirations.

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26 Sep: Best Buy, Clubhouse Network partner to bring tech to Boston teens

Jobs of the future will increasingly require technology skills, and Best Buy wants to make sure today’s teens are ready.

This week, we partnered with The Clubhouse Network to celebrate the grand opening of The Flagship Clubhouse, a Best Buy Teen Tech Center in Boston powered by iRobot. It’s a place where teens will have free access to a wide range of technology and skills training.

Teen Tech Centers are a key part of our commitment to helping prepare teens from underserved communities for tech-reliant jobs.

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09 Feb: Best Buy Investing in Houston’s Post-Hurricane Recovery

About 150 8th grade students at Fleming Middle School in Houston got hands-on and learned how to build their own computers on Friday – with the help of dozens of Best Buy volunteers. It was the latest, but certainly not the last, example of Best Buy’s investment in Houston schools, nonprofits and surrounding community.

Best Buy employs thousands of technically skilled employees in the greater Houston area. Many of them were affected by Hurricane Harvey last August. While we addressed our employees’ immediate needs, we also knew the path to full recovery for them and for the Houston community would be a long one.