Blogger will allow you to create pages, customize your sidebars, and view basic stats on who visits your blogs. There are many places you can go to download blogger themes if you don't like the options available to you, and upload them to your blog. Be mindful if you do this: SAVE all your posts else where first.
Here's what blogger looks like when you are inside, working on a post:
We'll compare this to wordpress, so that you can decide which you prefer for your assignments.