**12. Benefits and concerns**

Cloud computing is web-based computing where our information is no longer stored on our computer but rather on a larger server that we can access with a mobile device. Scalability and flexibility are some of the benefits of cloud computing where we can get 10 computers today and 1000 computers tomorrow. We rent them on the cloud instead of buying them. Therefore, by integrating our new cloud-based applications with our internal systems, we have benefited our IT team as well as our users. Cloud computing has freed us to change the rules in a way that gives IT as much free time. However, some of the concerns are the privacy and security by having our data on a cloud server and not stored on our own machine and of course that required the use of the internet too.

Second Life provides a platform where collaborative applications can be developed and deployed. The advantage of creating an application in a 3D social environment such as Second Life is that it's automatically presence-enabled. You can see who is using it and interact with them at the same time. It supports text chat, voice functions, and avatar customization. Yet there are more reasons to use virtual spaces because students learn more about social aspects, technologies used, architecture, subject matter, and education games
