Good on the student to use all the resources available to help himself. Too bad he did not have a GPS which would have instantaneously eliminated his positional uncertainty.......
I find it discouraging that the GPS vs traditional navigation always seems to be a binary argument. GPS can fail so never use it. Using GPS suddenly makes your brain mush and therefore you will be helpless if it ever fails
The fact is GPS systems provide the most accurate and most useful navigation information available. Not the least of which the nearest airport function can literally be a life saver.
The problem IMO is that instead of incorporating GPS in ab initio navigation along with traditional concepts we utterly ignore it. When I taught PPL's I included the use of GPS but with common sense strategies to both do a constant sanity check on what the box was saying and to keep track of your present position and what the heading required and TTE was.
So when my student is going to an airport North West of where he is now and the GPS says fly a heading of 260 he is going to say "hey that ain't right" . If the GPS fails then he is going to know that if he keeps flying the same heading he is going to be pretty close to his destination and since he was keeping track of his ETE he will know when he is getting close and since he always has the paper chart available and folded for his route of flight he can pick up landmarks to help maintain SA and his track.
I think is high time training moves into the 21 st century. Here is a news flash. PPL's are not stupid. After they graduate they will use the tools that work better, so why not teach them the best way to get the most out of their GPS, as well as prepare them for the pitfalls, as well as the advantages, of GPS as the primary means of getting from A to B