When is it approprite to use RDF Collections?

From the primer, demonstrating the use of RDF Collections:

   <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/courses/6.001">
      <s:students rdf:parseType="Collection">
            <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/students/Amy"/>
            <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/students/Mohamed"/>
            <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/students/Johann"/>
      </s:students>
   </rdf:Description>

Why would I want to use this over:

   <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/courses/6.001">
      <s:student rdf:resource="http://example.org/students/Amy"/>
      <s:student rdf:resource="http://example.org/students/Mohamed"/>
      <s:student rdf:resource="http://example.org/students/Johann"/>
   </rdf:Description>

I do understand the different graph that gets created in the two different cases but this hasn't helped me.

In the second case, if I want the list of students in the class I can run a simple SPARQL query. If I want to restrict other graphs from making statements about the list of students, again I can use SPARQL constructs (GRAPH keyword).

Is there a clear semantic difference between the two representations? Under what circumstances would I want to use one and not the other. How about RDF Containers?

Thanks,

Chris