This is a topic near and dear to our hearts. We have a Wii and a computer. DS9 is a computer wiz, can find any answer to any question on the net, is learning programming (he is taking a class that is surprisingly too easy for him), can type at reasonable speed after rejecting all efforts being taught. He loves to blog, research, send e-mail, debug software, etc etc etc.
But too much screen time makes him ornery. We have an electronic timer and both educational and recreational computer time is monitored. It doesn't work for him to say "I'm working on programming now" open ended. He would sit at the computer all day until he was starving, drooling, and ready to take our heads off. I can let him work on it for 1/2 hour, the timer goes off, and he better be off if he expects any additional computer time in the near future. If he can't find his timer or fails to turn it on, he's done. We laid down these rules and he lives by them now and doesn't even bother to complain about consequences any more. He gets 20-30 recreational minutes a day and educational use is doled out in small quantities as needed. His recreational time is the first thing to go if we have behavioral problems.
Anyway - thought I'd share our tool with you FWIW! The timer is VERY important at our house!
Good luck!
