Guys, firstly though I must point out that it would be best done on the ground, by physical instruction, demonstration, application and review in the dirt - navigation is a practical subject at the end of the day.
If you have a map you should use it, determine your start location, ie, if you just get out of the car and walk willy nilly into the sticks without first of all locating that start point then in my opinon, no skill on earth is going to help you and you deserve all you get.
Use a technique called
tick off points, firstly survey your route and identify features that you may identify on that route, small sections at a time, ie, 1 km or so, these features could be anything, linear or ground, ie, boundaries (though these do get moved), stream beds, ring contours (humps) etc, as you pass these, tick them off in your minds eye then refer back to map and repeat - then you allways have
a last known point.
Measure this distance and get familiar with
Naismith rule, ie, average
time and distance covered is around 5 or 4 kms per 1 hour walking on flat ground (depending on weight carried), add a minute for every contour you climb or steep decent - therefore you have
cut off points for when to stop walking and re-assess the ground to the map around you, using
pacings is difficult over long legs and really should be avoided unless you want to totally crash your brain counting numbers!
Use
aspect of slope, how close are the contours in relation to the steepness of ground your walking on, also, what cardinal point is the slope facing, ie, is the slope a northerly facing slope, etc,this skill is your insurance policy when in the mountains.
On flat featureless moorlands you may need to use the compass for
bearings - If using bearings, rather than trying to hit a feature dead on from 1 km or so,
aim off and use
target approaches, something large to the side of your objective or closer to it than you are at your launch point, this helps avoid parallel error.
Everyone can navigate providing your shown how, by someone who knows how - its just that people focus too much on trying to navigate in straight lines and then try to use resection/triangulation as a get out of jail card - in my experience triangulation is a skill used by (don't take this wrongly anyone) people who don't know better, it really is not reliable - if you did it 10 times in the same location I bet you'd end up with 10 differant locations and if your being mullered by the weather you've got no chance whatsover, use the map and use the magnifying glass on your compass base plate to help with the
micro detail and do it often, don't be scared of pulling it out in front of friends.
Oh and a myth to bust....if navigating at night, forget the stories about using red light - total nuts, it cancels out the contour lines on the map as these are also coloured red/orange, and over the edge you goooo !!
some navigation resources
http://www.nnas.org.uk/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hill-Walking-Official-Handbook-Mountain/dp/0954151100
http://www.mlte.org/index.php
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/education/teachingresources/index.html
http://www.silva.se/upload/catalog/123_eng.pdf
http://www.silva.se/default.aspx?id=301&epslanguage=EN
Hope this helps so far, I'm away a bit but will look back in here when I can !!
Stay safe