I reckon it is important to learn how to use paper and pencil and dead reckoning when training. It helps develop general awareness and trains the mind to correlate visual cues with what is on the chart - eg is that hill twenty miles away, ten, or fifty?! Is that road ten miles to starboard, five, or twenty?
After that? Use a GPS as the primary navigation aid, and have a lot more fun.
I have done a bit of flying in countries where normal visual navigation would be difficult, and radio navigation impossible. The answer: we use a hard wired GPS and, for back up, a hand held GPS! And I promise you, the problems if we got lost there would be one hell of a lot worse than in good old blighty.
sstreet:
I sympathise with your views - I have also been there and got the teashirt for my troubles. I posted a view about not bothering to learn morse code....ouch. And the whizz wheel....ouch. Don't worry about it - the Luddites may have smashed up the Spinnning Jennies, but that didn't stop the Industrial Revolution. You will meet a lot of Luddites in every field of endeavour. I can remember when the introduction of computers into business was blamed for every mistake that happened! 'Computer error' - how many of you are old enough to remember that mantra?