Have your students write their assignment and post them as comments. Comments generally don’t allow much formatting–APA style reference pages would be very hard to manage. You could moderate the comments so that students could not see each others’ answers until the deadline for the assignment passes. Moderation takes only a few clicks,

You could let set your students up as contributors to your blog, (see the Users tab), and they could post from there. However, your feedback to them will be public, so you’ll need another venue (email?) for keeping grades private.

Blogging may not be the most effective way to collect papers, depending on the kind of class you are teaching and what kinds of assignments you make. It would be a good discussion board for a small class, but a forum style group might be easier to manage, something like yahoo groups.

Feel free to contact me through my blog. I have several years experience teaching English online for the U. of Phoenix, and I just finished an MA blended/online. I have taught traditional courese in junior college and high school as well.